The road movie has long been a Hollywood staple, from Hope and Crosby, to Cheech and Chong, to Thelma and Louise. If done right, the genre remains a perfect storytelling device: to visualize, literally, where characters have come from and where they're going. Such is the case in The Lucky Ones, and while the journey is somewhat bumpy and awfully contrived at times, the characters making the trek are ones we don't mind being cooped with for long stretches of highway.
Director Neil Burger, who also directed the woefully underappreciated The Illusionist, uses the Iraq War as a backdrop for the story without leveraging the political overtones of the overseas conflict as subtext. The movie shares some common ground with the John Cusack-starrer Grace Is Gone, but without the pathos of a dead parent.
The three protagonists are a trio of soldiers who meet on a plane heading back to the States. Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams) and TK Poole (Michael Peña) are on a 30-day leave and trekking to Las Vegas while Fred Cheever (Tim Robbins) is out of the military for good, heading back to St. Louis to restart his life as a husband and father.
After landing at JFK in New York, they can't make their flight connections because of a power outage, so they decide to rent a minivan and share the drive to the Show Me State. Colee, it turns out, is heading to Vegas because she wants to return a guitar to the family of a dead soldier who saved her life, while TK has been injured by shrapnel near his groin and is unable to achieve an erection. He's thinking a Vegas hooker might be able to bring his sex life back to working condition.
Like any family cramped and stuck in a small space for awhile, the three grow close while also wanting to kill each other. Neither Colee nor TK have much of a skill set outside the Army, and they both find pity in learning that Cheever has been dumped by his wife not a minute after pulling into the driveway at his suburban St. Louis home. When his son tells him that he's been admitted to Stanford but needs $20,000 for tuition, Cheever decides to continue west with his newfound friends and think of a way to come up with the cash.
As the gang travels though the Rockies, the story's credibility stretches a bit thin. TK and Colee find immediate shelter during a sudden tornado right around the time three prostitutes happen to be munching on a salad in the middle of nowhere, and offer to investigate if TK's privates are in working condition. Yet, when the gang ends up in Vegas and contemplate where their lives go from here, the odd circumstances of the trip don't seem as bothersome.
McAdams, who offers a sexy toughness that's hard to resist, continues to be one an actress to keep an eye on, while Peña must endure a character that's a bit one note. He doesn't have much to work with here. It's the subdued Robbins, to no surprise, who's most affecting and identifiable. Trying to keep his sanity while everything is falling apart, he feels very much like any of us under trying circumstances. He doesn't need an odd plot device to show his mettle. Like a good soldier, he holds it together when chaos reigns around him. And while by himself he can't keep the film from feeling a bit overcooked at times, he's good enough to keep us entertained for the ride.
Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.