Writer-director Daniel Brown’s Your Lucky Day offers a twist-laden take on the hostage crisis film. Set almost entirely within a convenience store, the story revolves around a $156 million-winning lottery ticket and how it triggers a bloody series of events. A young drug dealer, Sterling (the late Angus Cloud), pounces on the opportunity and robs the unlucky winner right before a policeman emerges from the bathroom. Faced with too many loose ends to simply leave and collect the money, Sterling opts to cut in the witnesses that he initially takes as hostages, as long as they help him cover up his crimes.
For a thriller, Your Lucky Day’s atmosphere is oddly and refreshingly relaxed. For one, the characters don’t need much convincing when it comes to going with Sterling’s plan. Some, like the pregnant Ana Marlene (Jessica Garza), even prove quite adept at scheming as they puzzle out how to make the unlucky lotto winner’s body disappear. The film doesn’t linger on the philosophical intrigue as long as it ought to, but it proves to be a skillful potboiler.
The situation consistently escalates through no shortage of new dilemmas and misdirects, like a long stop at some train tracks and a gun that may or may not be empty. Though the characters all have their own agendas, it’s not squabbling or subterfuge that tears the group apart. Pity, then, that the final problem that they do face locks Your Lucky Day, which coasts far on the pleasant surprise of some sharp plotting, into a more conventional thriller groove. But even this misstep is passable enough on the way to an amusingly feel-bad ending.
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