Lucky **** (2017, Harry Dean Stanton, David Lynch, Ron Livingston, Ed Begley, Tom Skerritt, James Darren) – Movie Review

The legendary star character actor Harry Dean Stanton stars in director John Carroll Lynch’s splendidly quirky 2017 bitter-sweet comedy drama as 90-year-old atheist Lucky, a no-messing US Navy veteran living successfully alone in an oddball American small town. He is clearly one of the town’s oddballs, a grouchily likeable one, though not too easy on the eye or to rub along with.

Previously healthy, he collapses at home, and faces sickness and decline. But he embarks on a difficult spiritual journey of reassessment to find meaning, positivity and acceptance.

Harry Dean Stanton is tremendous in a truly winning performance, taking no prisoners, though it is almost unbearably sad to watch it now that he has departed, just as That Good Night (2017) was so difficult to watch with John Hurt recently gone.

Actor John Carroll Lynch makes the film as a tribute to fellow star character actor Stanton, but Stanton makes it so much more, in an appealing, memorable performance, luckily one of his best. In this tribute to character acting, there are also excellent performances by Ron Livingston is as Bobby Lawrence, Ed Begley Jr as Lucky’s doc Dr Christian Kneedler, Tom Skerritt as Fred, James Darren as Paulie, Beth Grant as bar owner Elaine, Barry Shabaka Henley as Joe, and David Lynch in a hysterical turn as Howard.

This is a memorable occasion, now a great send-off. John Carroll Lynch ensures that it is. No, really Harry Dean Stanton ensures that it is. It must be said too that there is a very, very good screenplay by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja at a time when good screenplays are going out of fashion.

Stanton played Carl Rodd in Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and of course Stanton and Skerritt both appeared in Alien (which also starred John Hurt).

With some demanding film-making, not least the great final shot, Lucky looks like Harry Dean Stanton would live for ever, but he died on 15 September 2017, aged 91, of natural causes. This is nice: ‘I’ve been rather like a cat. I’m finicky and I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve made career choices and missed meetings that would have made me a much bigger actor. But that would have demanded more of my time too.’

His first (uncredited) role was for Hitchcock as the Department of Corrections Employee in The Wrong Man (1956) and his first credited role was Private Miller in Tomahawk Trail (1957).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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