Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Samir Oliveros
Starring: Paul Walter Hauser, David Strathairn, Walton
Goggins, Shamier Anderson, Haley Bennett, Johnny Knoxville, Maisie Williams
Paul Walter Hauser is best known for portraying one of the
unluckiest men in America, the title character of Clint
Eastwood's Richard Jewell. Perhaps it's only fitting then that he should now find himself
headlining The Luckiest Man in America.
The film sees Hauser play Michael Larson, an ice cream truck driver who
made US TV history in 1984 by winning the biggest ever jackpot (over
$110,000) on the popular game show 'Press Your Luck'. Luck had very
little to do with Larson's success though. Poring over VHS recordings of
the show, Larson had worked out that the show's supposedly random game
of chance wasn't random at all, but actually based on as few as five
patterns, the sequences of which he had memorised.
In this heavily dramatised account of the taping of Larson's two
episodes, the infamous contestant is portrayed initially as a classic
Paul Walter Hauser "type," a put-upon working class schlub who earns our
sympathy as the little man battling the powers that be. But as the
narrative progresses our view of Larson shifts as he morphs into a
creepy, manipulative man who appears to have a closet full of
potentially disturbing skeletons.
At first glance The Luckiest Man in America might seem like a cousin of Robert Redford's Quiz Show, which similarly documented a real life game show scandal. But in its
increasingly unnerving tone it has more in common with films
like Network, Christine and Anna Kendrick's recent directorial debut Woman of the Hour; movies that examine darker chapters in the chronicles of American
reality TV.
Colombian director Samir Oliveros heads a
South American crew behind the camera, lending the film a distinctively
Latin touch of surreal camp, enhanced by a disruptively discordant jazz
funk score by John Carroll Kirby. I can't help but wonder if
Oliveros was inspired by Spanish artist Javi de Castro, who documented
the Press Your Luck scandal in his 2017 graphic novel 'Larson - The
Luckiest Man in the World'.
There's a sense that the CBS studio, with its maze of corridors and
colourful sound stages, is a sort of limbo in which Larson finds himself
trapped. In the movie's oddest segment, Larson accidentally wanders into
a taping of a talk show, where the host (Johnny Knoxville)
invites him onto the stage. Elsewhere Larson believes he's being chased
by the police, only to realise they're simply uniformed extras from a
cop show being filmed on the lot. Blending the cheesy smarm of '80s TV
with an increasingly unsettling feeling that something awful is going to
happen, The Luckiest Man in America is surprisingly similar to the recent cult horror hit Late Night with the Devil, complete with a smarmy host in a bad wig, played by a
shit-eating Walton Goggins.
The behind the scenes drama resembles The Larry Sanders Show as execs bicker about how to handle Larson and attempt to throw
their colleagues under the bus. Shamier Anderson and David Strathairn are respectively great as
the casting director who initially rejected Larson and the executive
producer who fell for his folksy charm, the two men finding themselves
in the network's firing line over the developing fiasco.
As the show's producers begin to use underhanded tactics to disrupt
Larson's winning streak, The Luckiest Man in America becomes a parable on the falsehoods of the American dream. Larson
technically isn't cheating. He's worked hard to figure out how to make
money, how to win, but he comes to learn that the ultimately it's the
house always wins, even when you take their money. Even though Larson
walks away with a sum of money he could only have dreamed of, it comes
at an emotional cost, and by the time the studio dims its applause
lights his spirit has been broken, the system having well and truly
reminded him which lane his ice cream truck belongs in.
The Luckiest Man in America is in US cinemas from April 4th. A UK/ROI release has yet
to be announced.
