A weirdly sanitised film about poker game

Lucky You
STARRING: Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore, Robert Downey Jr
DIRECTOR: Curtis Hanson
124 mins

What’s happened to Eric Bana? When he starred in Chopper in 2000, playing the notorious criminal Brandon “Chopper” Read, it was an extraordinary acting breakthrough for this one-time comic and impressionist.
He had the chops, as they say, for a demanding lead role in a feature film. And what chops they were: bloated, swarthy, scary. He was a performer who could turn on a sixpence from funny to terrifying. What, we wondered, would this terrific discovery do next?
The answer turned out to be: act very, very boringly in lots and lots of disappointing films.
Here is more of the same: a weirdly-sanitised gambling movie about poker, from director Curtis Hanson, who himself has given us a lot more to write home about in the past. It would appear to be targetted at a new generation of poker fans: the vast new fanbase whose battalions amass at tournaments and online.
Minutes and minutes and minutes go by while characters discuss the nerdy technical and strategic niceties of the game, which take precedence over old-fashioned things like drama or romance. Often, there will be a screamingly significant close-up on ... the eight of clubs! And we’re presumably supposed to understand how desperately important that is.
Lucky You is structured like a wholesome sports movie, climaxing at the World Poker Tournament (WPT).
Bana plays Huck Cheever, a Vegas player with a serious habit, brilliant but somehow permanently broke. He needs $10,000 to get a place in the WPT and tries to alchemise this sum from gambling, fixing to turn the paltry few dollars in his pocket into big bucks at the poker tables.
In addition to this, he’s been royally screwed up by his dad, L C Cheever (Robert Duvall), a legendary player who has always beaten his son at poker.
However, Huck could be rescued by the love of a good woman: lounge-bar singer Billie, played with a what-on-earth-am-I-doing-here expression on her face by poor old Drew Barrymore, whose good-natured intelligence deserves more than this.

By Peter Bradshaw