Lucky You DVD Review

By CharlesWilsonMovieExpert February 24, 2012 2:51 AM

     Print Story

Lucky You is a 2007 film directed by Curtis Hanson and starring Eric Bana as Huck Cheever, a man who is a solid poker player but has a tendency to play recklessly. His all-in or nothing attitude sees him have difficulty in being able to stay at the top of the game.

He then meets Billie Offer, played by Drew Barrymore, and begins a relationship with her and things seem to be going well until Huck's father L.C. Cheever, played by Robert Duval, comes to town. L.C. is a two-time World Series of Poker  Champion, something that Huck has never been able to accomplish. The two have an estranged relationship and that estrangement interferes with Huck's ability to play efficiently at the table.

Much of the story focuses on Huck trying to win a stake into the World Series of Poker and during that time, he practically destroys his relationship with Billie after trying to get her to cheat for him and also stealing money from him.

Huck does eventually make the stake for the WSOP and both he and his father make the final table. He and his father make the final three against an unknown player who won his seat on a satellite. Huck intentionally throws the game to give his dad a chance to win, but his father ends up losing in 2nd place.

After the poker tournament, the two started playing heads up for spare change, something they used to do when he was a kid and it appears that his relationship is restored. The final scene of the movie shows that he and Billie will have another chance in their relationship as well.

Lucky You, while a movie about poker, is really a movie about relationship. In this case, the relationship between father and son and how that can bleed into one's person and professional life. Huck was constantly trying to live up to his father's image and also held resentment against his father over things that had happened in his past. Eventually, Huck had to realize that he was his own man and take responsibilities.

In the end, Lucky You is not a poker movie. It is a movie about personal and family relationships in a poker setting. Once one views the movie as such, it becomes clear that this movie does a great job in showing how Huck becomes his own man and repairs the fractured relationships in his life. This movie does a great job of hiding complex stories in a poker setting, so well that some may miss it while analyzing the technical merits of the film as a poker movie.
 

Tweet This Now!