Lucky Break
by Peter Cattaneo
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DVD details
Actor: Bill Nighy, James Nesbitt, Lennie James, Olivia Williams, Timothy SpallDirector: Peter Cattaneo
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 108 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-10-22
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Paramount
DVD Reviews of Lucky Break
DVD Review: Entertaining
Summary: 4 Stars
Small-time crook Jimmy Hands fears his luck may have run out. After a botched bank robbery, Jimmy finds himself in prison. But his fortune turns when the warden asks Jimmy to recruit prisoners to act in a musical he's written and plans to stage. Realizing this offers the possibility of a perfect escape route, Jimmy and his cast run the risk of being caught in both the stage's spotlights and the prison's searchlights. It is worth borrowing from your library as I did. It was fun to watch.DVD Review: Surprisingly awful
Summary: 1 Stars
After passing on The Full Monty in favour of Brassed Off, the now all-but defunct Film Four were quick to throw money at Peter Cattaneo's next comedy and confidently launched a huge marketing campaign for Lucky Break secure in the knowledge that they had the big local hit of the year. Subsequent excuses for the film's disastrous performance at the box-office varied from good weather putting people off going to the cinema to the revelation that the screenwriter had done time for IRA offences (subsequently overturned, but still about as endearing to the British public as Al Qaeda are to Americans). For some reason no-one mentioned the fact that it's not any good. At all.
A grab-bag of second-hand ideas from Two-Way Stretch, The Tall Guy and others, it's a laugh-free zone that goes out of its way to avoid surprises while failing to ever find its own tone, nodding to half-baked attempts realism and wildly underdeveloped comedy without ever committing to either. Even the tried-and-trusted routines don't work here: Bill Nighy is just irritating as he tries to splutter some life into unfunny dialogue while Timothy Spall does his dishevelled hamster shtick yet again, while the amateur musical used as a backdrop for the planned prison break seems simply amateurish and unfunny. Quite dreadful.
DVD Review: Under-rated entertainment.
Summary: 5 Stars
We never heard of this movie, but the cover looked interesting at the video rental store. We were not disappointed. It was funny and entertaining throughout. Being big fans of community theatre, it reminded us of "Waiting for Guffman," another movie we can recommend that didn't get enough attention.DVD Review: Lots to like
Summary: 4 Stars
I watched this because I watch anything Timothy Spall does. He has a smaller part, but is brilliant, again. Yet everyone else does a fine job a well. Frank harper demonstrates he can play the gamut, as a vicious thug whose look stops clocks. Olivia Williams gradually and reluctantly falls in love, and does so beleivably and tenderly. There are no caricatures in here, none of the cartoons that people American prison stories. Losers, bad people, and crooks are in prison, and most belong there. But they can change, can grow and can do better.
Warm, funny, understated, and clever. Nice job.
Description of Lucky Break
Peter Cattaneo's Lucky Break is a likable comedy that suffered by being compared with his earlier hit The Full Monty, but is attractive enough in its own right. Charming, incompetent bank robber Jimmy Hands (James Nesbitt), five years into a 12-year sentence, puts together an escape plan that exploits the desire of the stage-struck prison governor (Christopher Plummer) to see his musical about the life of Nelson performed. The plan gets ever more complicated as he finds himself wanting to wreck the career of a bullying prison officer, trying to outwit an unpleasant thug who wants to supplant his original accomplices, and weighing the idea of escape at all against his growing relationship with anger-management trainer Annabel (Olivia Williams).This is an intelligent caper film with some underlying serious tones. Jimmy slowly comes to realize that crime involves mixing with some unpleasant people. The backstage musical stuff--with its wonderfully fatuous ex-Cambridge director and a score just the right side of dreadful--is hilarious, and the plot's convoluted central scam is efficient as it plays out. If there is an overall failure, it comes from the clash between the film's farcical elements and the bittersweet quality of its central relationship, as well as Timothy Spall's portrayal of the victimized Cliff. --Roz Kaveney
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