MOVIE REVIEW: Lucky Strike ~ FILMYWAPAS

Images courtesy of Roadside Attractions and Saban Films.

LUCKY STRIKE— 2 STARS

Lucky Strike makes two cardinal mistakes in its first two scenes, which, in turn, dilute the rest of the movie. It’s a shame, too, because The Last Castle and The Contender director Rod Lurie, filming in the thick woods of Bulgaria, utilized striking wintery location shooting to put his actors through their paces and make us feel every cold snap of this movie’s little piece of the famed Battle of the Bulge during December of 1944. While a plethora of World War II films have been made for nine decades, the right honed tangent could have garnered strong new favor for informative escapism that comes from the good entries.

In the opening scene, Lurie, scripting Lucky Strike with Mark Frydman (Black Butterfly and Last Seen Alive), ratchets the tension right away when an all-black group from the 99th Infantry Division is ambushed on a roadside in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium when their truck breaks down. The arriving SS show no mercy with immediate despicable flair. Through the hail of gunfire, there appears to be one wounded living survivor named Maren (Kwame Harrison of The Wire).

LESSON #1: DON’T PLANT AN ELABORATE SEED THAT WON’T BEAR FRUIT— Surely, like a diligent war film looking to start on that particular kind of dramatic and tone-setting foot, charting an effort to rescue and save that man has to be one of Lucky Strike’s goals. While the plot’s happenstance later arrives at this same truck location, that more important answer is a grim and unfortunate no. When that hope is dashed, a little more air is let out from Lucky Strike, which, by that point, had been leaking for a while.

The bigger miscalculation comes in the second scene and starts the diminishing trickle. A transition from monochromatic European snow to stateside American snow and full color film introduces Lucky Strike’s headliner—Lurie’s lead on The Outpost—Scott Eastwood, as Colonel John Castle. He arrives at the apartment doorstep of Mrs. Caldwell, an older Black woman who reluctantly welcomes the well-meaning officer inside. Played by the always-excellent King Richard Academy Award nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, we learn that Mrs. Caldwell lost a husband and son during the war and worked on the assembly line for the Galvin Manufacturing Company. For a split second, we wonder if her men were among those lost in the film’s opening massacre, but Castle’s prattling about other business quells that wonder—the same one ultimately dashed later.

LESSON #2: THE WRONG TIME TO USE FLASHBACK— As Mrs. Caldwell indulges Col. Castle’s request for a cup of coffee, which he adds fortifying trickles of whiskey from a flash in his pocket as he begins to explain why he’s really there, kickstarting a grand rollback flashback that becomes the bulk of Lucky Strike. Right then and there, no matter what happens going forward, we know our square-jawed, handsome lead is going to make it out, alive and kicking. Even if that was always going to be the case in a good-guys-win script, at least cast a sliver or two of doubt by saving whatever will transpire from this encounter with Aunjunae Ellis-Taylor for the coda finale.

This early revelation in Lucky Strike syphons a tremendous amount of the suspense that follows. Once again, that’s a regrettable turn from what could have unfurled with fierce energy. Back in Krinkelt, Belgium, John Castle, then a captain, was part of the 324th Engineering Battalion with a demolition mission from his commanding officer (a single-scene banger appearance from Colin Hanks) to block a main road from the approaching Panzer tanks. Going along with his team is a piece of new technology: a backpack-mounted SCR-300 FM radio transceiver, nicknamed “Lassie” and made by—you guessed it—the Galvin Manufacturing Company (which would later become the household name of Motorola).

LESSON #3: PROPS TO NEW TECHNOLOGY— While the blockade mission is successful, Capt. Castle is the last man standing after machine gun snipers and arriving scouts wipe out his team. The nearest Allied base in Elsenborn is 30 kilometers away through freezing conditions and heavy conflict. Luckily, John has that SCR-300 radio to relay mission success and get all-important instructions and updates on how to get back to safety. That sure beats extinct passenger pigeons and looking around war-torn Belgium for a payphone. Guess that new technology—likely culled by Rebel Ridge military advisor Jariko Denman—is pretty handy in a jam.

Alas, radio or not, those 30 klicks aren’t going to be easy for our brave captain in Lucky Strike, and Rod Lurie is not shy about stacking a heavy body count of casualties. The Red Sonja team of supervising stunt coordinator Kaloian Vodenicharov and fight choreographer Borislav Iliev sends Scott Eastwood through a steeplechase of obstacles and opponents, filmed often by smooth aerial drone work. With solid effort to ratchet up would-be excitement, each sequence gets wilder and whollier than the one before it, spanning spies, safehouses, hiding among corpses, flamethrowers, and even a symbolically suggestive pale white horse (which gets repeat appearances and a lyrical shoutout in the closing credits song by Calman Hart).

As we see Scott Eastwood—dry as beef jerky in the hero department—complete this entire ordeal, especially knowing his character was going to be fine the entire time, his preposterous Gary Stu knack for getting away by the skin of his teeth is luckier than the namesake classic cigarette which titles the movie. The edge of the seat we should be pushed to feels too safe and far away, which flies in the face of the bold R-rated danger that marches through Lucky Strike. By the time we get back to Mrs. Caldwell for a touching bit of Motorola homefront gratitude, even that poignancy is weakened. That’s unfortunate because the right pieces were present, just misaligned.