Colee (Rachel McAdams), Cheever (Tim Robbins) and TK (Michael Peña) have all returned to the States for some much needed rest and relaxation nursing various battle wounds after their tours in Iraq come to an end. While both of the younger soldiers have to return for another go-around in the desert, the newly retired veteran Cheever is excited about being able to finally spend some quality time with his loving wife and teenage son.

Michael Pena and Rachel McAdams in Roadside Attractions' The Lucky Ones

Circumstances conspire against them, however, and soon the trio are sharing a rented minivan traveling the wild roads of the country they're sworn to protect heading to Las Vegas, each looking to wager heartfelt dreams of a better tomorrow against an increasingly stingy house. Along the way they get to see the world through eyes wide open, the highs, lows and absurdist in-betweens not about to keep any of them from completing their respective missions and developing friendships they’ll hold dear for the rest of their lives.

Director Neil Burger’s latest effort The Lucky Ones is the best film the auteur behind Interview with the Assassin and The Illusionist has made yet. This homespun yarn of soldiers wandering through a strange land they still call home is a humorously profound road trip I almost couldn’t help but love. It is, in its own idiosyncratic way, the sly observant second cousin to Kimberly Peirce’s Stop-Loss, only this time out the melodrama is kept to a minimum with the unspoken bonds of soldierly camaraderie taking center stage.

In other words, this is a movie more interested in seeing how its central figures look at the world around them then it is in making any big grand eloquent statements about the Iraq War at large. While these three begin as strangers it doesn’t take them long at all to start bickering and communicating and debating and loving like family. The universality of the situation they’ve just extricated themselves from allowing for nonverbal communication only they can understand, a raise of an eyebrow or a flick of the wrist all it takes for each of them to know exactly what’s rifling through the other one’s mind.

It’s a special dynamic, and Burger nails it. There is a verisimilitude to this whole enterprise that can’t help but echo 1970’s classics like Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces and The Last Detail. There are so many little touches, so many delicate nuances that constantly amaze and inspire, that by the time it was over I almost didn’t want their story to come to an end.

Sure it all plays like a series of vignettes but so what? Life, at its basest level, is really nothing more than a road trip as it is anyhow, three soldiers heading cross-country in search of something ephemeral and just out of reach a pretty striking metaphor of what it is the majority of us do just walking around our lives on a day-to-day basis. While the common through line remains the same – survival – getting there is different every single moment of every single day, many of the intricate dramas, adventures, tragedies and comedic devastations so multifaceted and varied it’s never the same thing twice.

There are some bumpy moments, not the least of which is Cheever’s homecoming, which is so absurdly coincidental and chaotic I never believed it was happening for a single gosh darn second. But the majority of the problems are small, virtually insignificant, and in the grand scheme of things The Lucky Ones is so wonderfully entertaining and rapturously moving I almost didn’t even notice.

It helps immeasurably that all three of the actors are outstanding. It’s refreshing to see Robbins back on his game digging into a character as complex as this one, while Peña impresses finding dimensions to TK that go beyond the written page. But it is McAdams who knocks it out of the park, her Colee as sensational a role as any the highly talented actress has ever had the good fortune to inhabit. She is absolutely divine, and when the movie was over sitting there all I wanted to do was talk about her. 

I liked both Interview with the Assassin and The Illusionist, but neither had the strength or the conviction to go too far beyond their visual imagination and period moodiness. In the stark, almost documentary-like simplicity of The Lucky Ones Burger finds his mojo and finally delivers on his promise. I loved this movie, adored it’s every twist and turn, and in a perfect world audiences are going to feel the same way, too.

Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)

Additional Links

-  The Lucky Ones Theatrical Trailer