I wrote this in 2007 for a media outlet that decided to run a poker aficionado's take instead. And hey, sometimes you need verisimilitude to flesh things out. That's all part of the writing game. It's all good. But I thought you might enjoy my take.
Or, World Poker Tour: The Movie. Curtis Hanson openly shares his poker obsession in Lucky You. On the surface, the cutthroat, seedy world of Vegas gambling would be prime subject matter for the director of L.A. Confidential. But by making sure we see every deal of every card in every game – while poker neophytes scratch their heads wondering what the hell’s going on – Hanson and script cowriter Eric Roth waste an opportunity to get inside the lives of the players.
It’s a shame, because the talents of a fine cast are wasted breathing life into bland stereotypes. Confident cardsharp Huck Cheever (Eric Bana), in town for the World Poker Championships, he meets up with Billie Offer (Drew Barrymore), younger sister of onetime flame Suzanne (Debra Messing). She’s an aspiring Bakersfield singer big on heart but little on talent despite a job at “the last neighborhood bar in Vegas”, and a total newbie to the Vegas poker scene. She isn’t even aware that you’re not supposed to talk about your cards. But no matter how good Huck is, there’s always someone better, and it’s celebrated champion L.C. (Robert Duvall), who happens to be his father.
What’s absolutely tragic, given that intriguing setup, is that the actors are given the barest of backstory. Sure, Huck’s pissed that Daddy took off when he was seven, taking Mom’s ring to pawn it, but what really drives their relationship? We never find out, because Bana’s Huck is all Paul Newman swagger, by way of Matthew McConaughey, at its best early on when he succeeds in convincing a pawnshop owner to buy his digital camera at a higher price with a verbal shell game involving the three she already has. Alas, it is Bana’s only opportunity to really stretch. Uber thesp Duvall certainly deserves better than the Gumpish “play cards like you live life, live life like you play cards” tripe he’s saddled with. Charles Martin Smith’s diminutive crime boss comes off as comical rather than menacing because we don’t know that much about him even though he has Huck and an associate thrown into an empty pool by thugs for losing his stake. But if you yearn to see Barrymore finally lose that romcom perkiness, then you might feel lucky watching her almost sugarless lost-soul-finding-her-way Billie. But be warned that this schizoid oddity was held back from release twice before being unceremoniously dumped in Spidey’s path. It’ll be better viewed as a companion to the small-screen WPT.
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