Lucky You (2007)

A hotshot poker player tries to win a tournament in Vegas, but is fighting a losing battle with his personal problems.

Director:

Curtis Hanson

Writers:

Eric Roth (screenplay), Curtis Hanson (screenplay),

Stars:

Phyllis Somerville, Eric Bana, Drew Barrymore

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Phyllis Somerville	...	Pawnbroker
Eric Bana	...	Huck Cheever
Horatio Sanz	...	Ready Eddie
Drew Barrymore	...	Billie Offer
Joey Kern	...	Billie's Admirer
Debra Messing	...	Suzanne Offer
Delaine Yates	...	Ginger
Mykel Shannon Jenkins	...	Gary
Robert Duvall	...	L. C. Cheever
Charles Martin Smith	...	Roy Durucher
Robert Downey Jr.	...	Telephone Jack
Saverio Guerra	...	Lester
Danny Hoch	...	Bobby Basketball
Kenny Cau	...	Chinese Restaurant Waiter
Kelvin Han Yee	...	Chico Banh

Storyline

In Las Vegas, Huck Cheever is a poker player, brilliant but also prone to let emotion take over. It's the week of the poker world series, and Huck must come up with the $10,000 entry fee, which he wins, loses, borrows, and loses - and even steals part of from Billie Offer, an earnest young woman who's new in town and who catches Huck's eye. By the time the tournament starts, Huck owes everyone. Complicating things is the arrival of Huck's father, whom Huck detests for having left his mother, a champion player in town to win. Can Huck learn to play poker the way he lives and to live the way he plays poker? Or is his only flush the sound of his life going down the toilet?

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Plot Keywords:

poker | poker player | losing | pawnshop | volleyball | 

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Taglines:

Take a chance.

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Genres:

Drama | Romance | Sport

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for some language and sexual humor

Details

Official Sites:

Warner Bros [fr] Warner Bros. [us]

Country:

USA Germany Australia

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

4 May 2007 (USA)

Also Known As:

Bem-vindo ao Jogo

Filming Locations:

Lake Las Vegas, Henderson, Nevada, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$55,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£56,346 (UK) (22 June 2007)

Gross:

$5,755,286 (USA) (29 June 2007)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros, Village Roadshow Pictures, Deuce Three Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

124 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Was initially scheduled for a release date of September 8, 2006. It was then pushed back to March 16, 2007. It was pushed back once more, before finally being released on May 4, 2007. Several posters were already made up for the film that still had it's original release date of September 8, 2006 on it.

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Goofs

In the Bellagio poker room scene immediately after 'Huck Cheever' applies the frozen peas to his bruised face, his father 'L.C. Cheever' gives him $500 in chips from his stack. This is not allowed. Removing chips from the table, thus taking them out of out of play, is called "going south," and is very bad form. (This is different than letting another player buy chips from you to remain in the game, which does not take the chips out of play. 'L.C. Cheever' does this when he sells chips to 'Big Buckle Iverson' after busting him earlier in the movie.)

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Quotes

Huck Cheever: I could have played it safe. That's not who I am.
L. C. Cheever: You've got it backwards, kid. You play cards the way you should lead your life. and you lead your life the way you should play cards. Maybe everybody has a blind spot. Maybe everybody has to learn from their mistakes. I sure learned from mine.

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Crazy Credits

After the credits there is a scene where Ready Eddie and Lester (the man with breast implants) argue over whether Lester actually spent an entire month in the bathroom or not. As the current month has thirty-one days and not just thirty. They soon begin to discuss whether the month of August has either thirty or thirty-one days, which soon leads them to a double-or-nothing wager over the fact.

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Connections

References Highway Patrol (1955)

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Soundtracks

"Choices"
Written by Billy Yates and Michel E. Curtis
Performed by George Jones
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records Inc.
By Arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User Reviews

Entertaining, And Poker Fans Will Really Love It

As far as playing or watching poker on television, I can take it or leave it, and I enjoyed this movie.... so I can imagine poker fans will really LOVE this film. It gives justice to their "sport" with realistic hands, playing, situations and attitudes.

Often, I thought something hokey was going to happen, something predictable but rarely did that occur in this film. You really never knew what was going to happen and suspense builds for a number of gambling scenes. I hesitate to say more for fear of spoiling anything. Suffice to say, the gambling scenes in here were very realistic. I know what from the behind-the- scenes bonus features in which a number of real-life professional players commented on that fact.

The film follows a father-and-son team (Eric Bana and Robert Duvall playing "Huck" and "L.C. Cheever") with a small romance sub-plot involving Drew Barrymore. It isn't just all about poker, although that's most of it - culminating in the World Series of Poker - but about the mentality of people who make gambling their life.

This film was far better than I figured it would be, and was rewarding in the end without being predictable. It was fairly low-key, too, in the profanity and sex department, but kids would be bored with this film, anyway.

This movie will mainly attract card players, I'm afraid, and that's too bad because it offers a lot more than that. The movie got better as it went along and wound up a good two hours of entertainment.