GET LUCKY

by Mark'd Commode

3.5 out of 10

Release Date: 26th August 2013 (DVD Premiere)

Director: Sacha Bennett (Outside Bet / Bonded By Blood)

Cast: Luke Tredaway, Emily Atack, Craig Fairbrass, Terry Stone, TJ Ramini, Marek Oravec, Richie Campbell, Rebecca Ferdinando, Ali Cook with Jason Maza and James Cosmo

Writer: TJ Ramini & Ali Cook

Trailer: GET LUCKY 

Unknown

Just when you thought the UK indie film industry had gotten over making tired gangster capers, along comes this charisma void. Get Lucky is a completely empty vessel that attempts to woo the audience with a set of stale overused plot conceits. The cast is made up of some of my favourites at play at the low-budget end of UK filmmaking but even they cannot breathe life into this vacuum.

Lucky (LUKE TREDAWAY – ATTACK THE BLOCK) is a getaway driver who ends up in debt to two low level hoods, Sebastian (CRAIG FAIRBRASS – RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER) and Kramer (TERRY STONE – KUNG FU FLID). Luckily, Lucky’s brother Raphael (TJ RAMINI – THE BILL) is also a criminal who is planning a heist to steal money and bonds from the two hoods’ boss, Mr Zigic (JAMES COSMO – TRAINSPOTTING).  Zigic’s nephew, Niko (MAREK ORAVEC) wants to climb the ranks, but also takes jobs on the side with his pal Eli (JASON MAZA – FISH TANK) who gets them involved in a heist that sees them unwittingly aid Raphael to fleece Zigic. Throw into the mix, Niko’s girlfriend, Bridgett (EMILY ATACK – THE INBETWEENERS) who becomes Lucky’s love interest and you have a giant bowl of plot spaghetti.

Unfortunately, all of that plot adds up to nothing because there is absolutely no room for characterisation. What turns out to be an over complicated tale of revenge, ends up having no satisfying pay off.  Oppressors are given short shrift, the heroes have no quirks beyond paying lip service to an aversion to superstitions.  Luke Tredaway is given very little to do beyond react to events and comes across like a lightweight. However, he is completely lifelike compared to the plummy TJ Ramini, the least convincing criminal since Dexter Fletcher‘s turn in Dead Cert.  It’s a good job he wrote and produced (?) this as he wouldn’t have been cast in such an unsuitable role. He’s just too posh and clean cut. Terry Stone has the closest thing to a character, playing one half of a comedy duo with dependable action plank Craig Fairbrass. His anger management issues throw up some vaguely funny lines but on the whole, the humour only serves to tip the movie into territory it doesn’t belong in.

Personal tragedies that back up the plot are only touched upon and serve as a weak attempt at giving gravitas to the film. It just comes across as corny and it is then wasted when the film draws to it’s very lame and unconvincing conclusion. Sadly, Get Lucky offers nothing new to the UK caper / gangster oeuvre. It’s just a pale wannabe. With a little more thought to characterisation and a less insipid leading actor this could have been something to watch. There’s nothing essentially wrong with the product itself, the cinematography is great and London looks glossier than usual, the car and boat chases are well-staged but are dramatically expendable, the soundtrack is effective if overly dark for something this frothy, essentially it comes unstuck when it comes to the story and a bad dose of miscasting.

3.5 out of 10 – Glossier than the average UK caper movie, this is still pretty anonymous and dare I say it boring. Shame because I always look forward to seeing what messrs. Maza, Stone and Fairbrass had been cooking up recently. In this case it was leftovers.

Review by Joe Pesci II below>>! He thought it was sh*t too!

WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT ACTOR IN BEFORE?

One thought on “GET LUCKY”

  1. Review by Matt Usher aka Joe Pesci II

    The song ‘Get Lucky’, by someone or something called ‘Daft Punk’ is one of the most frequently played popular music releases of 2013. The 2013 film of the same name omits the song. I have no doubt the producers (of the film) are kicking themselves at not being associated with the successful single (do they still call them singles?). I also have little doubt that the producers (of the song) are quite pleased not to be associated with the film.

    But what is this GET LUCKY film? It is the latest effort from the director of BONDED BY BLOOD! That was a dismal gangster film recycling the endlessly uninteresting story about the Range Rover murders in wherever it was. It was supposedly gritty and powerful and blokeishly geezerish. (I just killed my spellchecker.) For GET LUCKY we are still in blokeish geezerland, but this is more of a caper, a romp. Supposedly.

    Luke Treadaway is Lucky, a getaway driver returning to London after his parents were murdered. His brother is played by TJ Raminj. It would be churlish of me to point out that they look nothing like each other. It would also be churlish to point out that Luke Treadaway’s brother Harry is also an actor currently inhabiting the world of the low budget British movie. And anyway Ramini co-wrote the film so it’s only fair that he should be allowed to miscast himself in it; though that doesn’t explain his character’s barmy actions at the start of the film: he kidnaps Lucky, ties him up and pretends to be about to torture him! What larks, particularly as the last time these two met they were presumably grieving over their parents’ brutal murder.

    Being lovable scallywags they decide to do an armed robbery on a dodgy illegal casino run by dodgy foreigners and cockneys. Britpic legends Terry Stone and Craig Fairbrass turn up as dodgy cockney gangster blokes and do what they do best (respectively: be a bit of a nutter, impersonate a scary version of Sherwood Forest). But they also do what they do worst: comedy. Meanwhile Ramini’s plan requires him to employ some goons who just happen to work for the man they’re stealing from, though the goons don’t know they’re stealing from their own boss (because they’re goons and one of them’s played by Jason Maza). But Ramini also knows something else which I must not mention. Meanwhile Lucky has got lucky (giggle) with a young lady who just happens to be married to one of the goons. Coincidences abound. Or is it bad plotting? Lucky’s parents were murdered on the orders of James Cosmo (who has fun as a dodgy Eastern European gangster kingpin). Maza and Marek Oravec are the culprits. Meanwhile Fairbrass and Stone are also working for Cosmo, collecting protection from Ramini, who plays one of the many Britpic characters who owns a gym. Meanwhile everyone goes to the same posh pub. Bad guys and minor good guys get killed, sometimes for no apparent reason, and it all ends up with a gunfight around a container yard, like in WELCOME TO THE PUNCH but with fewer deaths. (In GET LUCKY the bad guy only has a few henchmen, whereas in WELCOME TO THE PUNCH the bad guys, who were a bunch of Labour MPs, had the full might of a security company’s very large private army to rely on).

    It’s one of those films so riddled with clichés and predictable lines that you variously groan and cheer as they come along. But at least it has a nicely restrained approach to violence, which gives it a bit more impact (at times). However, at least one character gets shot without it hurting or impeding his ability to walk or talk. Message to audience: bullets don’t hurt morally compromised good guys! Meanwhile Moravec, as a crazy trigger-happy foreigner, starts to resemble Captain Scarlet in his indestructibility.

    This is sort of a cockney geezer gangster film, though a bit short on cockney geezers (Maza, Stone and Fairbrass play supporting roles). The film focuses on an unwitting battle of wits between Treadaway and Moravec, who are unknowingly courting the same young lady, Emily Atack (who looks nice in a hat which is of extreme metaphorical importance). Treadaway, a more than promising young actor, is stranded disastrously with a colourless character of such infinitely vacuous emptiness that he can do nothing with it. It doesn’t help that Lucky is probably meant to be a fair bit older (Treadaway seems to be about twelve). This applies also to Moravec and Atack; the ménage a trois fails for a lot of reasons, not least that those involved all seem to be of school age. TJ Ramini is attractive, wooden and posh. Moravec glowers a bit and looks suitably dodgy, as a character constructed from cardboard. James Cosmo is fun as the big bad guy, but the film’s failure to deal with him is dire. Unless there’s going to be a GET LUCKY 2. THIS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!

    GET LUCKY doesn’t know which way to go. It’s a heist movie which puts the heist in the background. It’s a retribution thriller, but we never see the retribution, and frequently forget about it. It’s a love triangle drama as well; but we don’t believe in these characters for a second, so that falls apart. It’s a geezerishly blokeish film, but not aggressively so, so they’ve ended up saddling Stone and Fairbrass with some of the worst comic dialogue since Robin Askwith’s scriptwriter retired from the film business.

    Ultimately it’s uninspired and underwhelming. Much of it is competently done: the actors are mostly fine, the cinematography is decent (and thankfully less flashy than WELCOME TO THE PUNCH). But it’s all too bland and indecisive. The stakes should be high: there are murdered parents, betrayed spouses, a ruthless gangster boss on the rampage and a love triangle after all, but it’s all as harmless and as suspenseful as a game of charades.

    Reply

Leave a comment