Your Lucky Day

Dan Brown's Your Lucky Day is an above average B thriller that displays Brown's potential. The script, which Mr. Brown has been working for over a decade, pictures a Miami convenience store that becomes a war zone after a customer discovers that he has a lottery ticket worth $156 million. Brown establishes his primary theme of predatory capitalism from the get go, intercutting a minor drug deal with video streams featuring  examples of grander capitalistic excess. The director rather bangs you on the head with this message, but the film has enough hurtling narrative momentum to excuse both thematic overkill and the improbability of its plot.

The convenience store, which houses most of the action, becomes the setting for a 10 Little Indians like elimination of the cast. One of the strengths of the film is that you never know what character Brown will off next. The store also proves handy for one of Brown's visual coups, his use of surveillance footage. The stop action nature of the footage adds a chillingly spectral paranoia to a narrative in which the characters actions and fates seem predetermined. Brown visually rhymes the surveillance footage by shooting a deadly assault partially obscured by a passing train. We see the violent act in fits and starts, heightening the viewer's sense of dread and helplessness. 

Brown shows his facility with story structure and film craft, but Your Luck Day displays he needs to work on a mastery of dialogue and his players. The cast is not bad, just largely nondescript. The exception is the leading lady, Jessica Garza, who displays unusual talent for her age. Your Luck Day is nothing earthshaking, but I hope we don't have to wait another ten years for another feature from Dan Brown.