The Lucky Ones
Release Date:
September 26, 2008
Limited release
Movie of the Day for Wednesday, August 6, 2008
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On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 85/196 |
Max Braden |
Rachel McAdams was decently natural in this, not trying to steal the show. |
After having its release date pushed back more than a year due to the glut of films opening in Fall 2007 dealing with the Iraq war, The Lucky Ones is currently scheduled to open on October 24, 2008. Directed by Neil Burger, whose last effort was The Illusionist (ironically, that film was also lumped together with another similarly-themed movie released around the same time, The Prestige), the film stars Tim Robbins, Michael Pena, and Rachel McAdams in the story of two soldiers who go on a road trip after returning to the United States.
The difficulty in marketing the movie in the wake of the complete lack of box-office success for other Iraq-themed movies (Stop-Loss, In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, Lions for Lambs) was chronicled in a New York Times article in April 2008, and it seems that the movie is suffering from a bit of an identity crisis. While the movie obliquely deals with the war in Iraq, it is, according to the filmmakers, more the tragicomic story of a road trip taken by two soldiers returning home. Indeed, the filmmakers were eager to point out in the New York Times piece that the word "Iraq" is not mentioned once in the entire film. Nevertheless, for better or worse the movie already seems securely pegged into the "Iraq movie" box, and thus its chances for financial success seem slim given the middling performances of the films mentioned above. (Calvin Trager/BOP)
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