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Lucky Break
***
Cinema
Releases - August 24, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 107
minutes. Directed by Peter Cattaneo. Written by Ronan Bennett. Starring James
Nesbitt, Lennie James, Olivia Williams, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy, Ron Cook,
Christopher Plummer.
I don't want to curse his next movie by speaking
too soon, but Peter Cattaneo seems to have some kind of Midas Touch. "The
Full Monty" was a witty little script that the director turned into a hugely
successful masterpiece. And his new film, "Lucky Break", has
about as standard a screenplay as anyone could imagine, but in Cattaneo's
hands the picture flows charmingly. It's no masterpiece, and words like "amiable"
and "nice" spring to mind -- but it doesn't feel ineffectual, and is a solid
107 minutes at the pictures. Cattaneo has a gift for putting smiles on our
faces, for creating more of a feeling of sparkle than we have any reason
to expect.
"Lucky Break" stars James Nesbitt and Lennie James
as a pair of bank robbers who mindlessly botch one of their projects and
end up in the slammer. Nesbitt is a properly charmin' Irish lad, who skips
his way around jail when he's not in solitary confinement and eventually
comes up with a scheme to escape from prison by putting on a musical to distract
the guards.
The typical Prison Movie Cast of Characters is
on display -- the cocky hero (Nesbitt), the black guy (James), the sensitive
big guy, the calm intellectual guy, the young guy, the bully, and even a
love interest (Olivia Williams). Ronan Bennett's screenplay has some genuinely
inspired witty moments (just look at the scene in which the main group of
inmates all attempt to contribute to a love letter), but it's mainly tacked
together, and some of the 'eccentricities' the writing offers are pretty
shallow, like the way the warden (Christopher Plummer) has such an effeminate
soft spot for the theatre.
But everything, even the Plummer role, seems kind
of amusing in "Lucky Break", because of the way Cattaneo lets things hum
along. He allows the spunky charm of Nesbitt's performance to determine the
mood of the picture, so it doesn't catch the common Britcom disease of seeming
too insubstantial, and it works. "Lucky Break" is nowhere near as good as
"The Full Monty", but in some ways Cattaneo deserves an Oscar nomination
for this film as much as he did for that one.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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