If You Are Looking for a Tense, Thought-Provoking Thriller, It’s Your Lucky Day (FANTASTIC)
Title: Your Lucky Day
First Non-Festival Release: November 10, 2023 (Theatrical Release)
Director: Dan Brown
Writer: Dan Brown
Runtime: 89 Minutes
Starring: Jessica Garza, Angus Cloud, Elliot Knight
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
This film’s review was written after its screening at the Fantastic Film Festival in 2023.
What would you do for a million dollars? It’s a question you’ve likely been asked before, and one you will be asking after watching Your Lucky Day. Everyone has an answer, but few consider what it takes to put it into action.
When Mr. Laird (Spencer Garrett) wins $156 million dollars on a lottery ticket at a quiet bodega late at night, all hell breaks loose when local miscreant Sterling (Angus Cloud) decides to rob him in front of the other customers. A police officer (Sterling Beaumon) intervenes and it goes poorly for everyone. The resulting shootout leaves the original winner dead and the police officer severely wounded. Sterling convinces the other customers, Abraham (Elliot Knight) and Ana (Jessica Garza), along with store clerk Amir (Mousa Hussein Kraish) to conspire together and cover up the incident in return for a cut of the cash.
A Christmas set morality thriller, Your Lucky Day puts wells realized characters into a pressure cooker scenario with plenty of surprises.
Money has the power to change lives, whether people acknowledge that reality or not. Your Lucky Day posits that everyone can find a rationale for the right price. It may be easy to assume that you wouldn’t succumb to the pressure to do something underhanded at the chance of financial security, but is that the truth? Each character in Your Lucky Day has a good reason to keep quiet about this shootout. They all can live a little more comfortably and distance themselves from their role, however small, in the shootout if they work together. It means their baby grows up without worry for Abraham and Ana, leaving a life of unsafe drug deals for Sterling, and getting out of an overwhelming mortgage for Captain Rutledge.
Perhaps the strongest element of Your Lucky Day is its complicated web of character motivations and journeys throughout the night. As the night changes, each major player finds more obstacles to achieving their goals of financial security. Negotiation is a part of the terror, where each person must justify their utility to stay alive. The flowing nature of allegiances and ever-changing body count makes Your Lucky Day a riveting watch with plenty of surprises.
These character’s arcs also showcase the darker sides of racism, classism, and corruption that force everyday people into taking desperate measures for survival. Every person fighting over this lottery ticket is living a difficult life in some way. Money is tight all around and even living in the United States, the richest country in the world, isn’t without struggle for most. With the American Dream looking further out of reach for the average citizen, it is understandable that people would want to ease off the pressure to avoid crumbling under the weight of exploitation in the future.
Cue working- and middle-class people literally killing themselves over a piece of paper that guarantees a life of ease. Each thinks they are more deserving than the other. They must use whatever knowledge or skills they possess to commit hideous acts towards others to ensure that life. No person is exempt from this dilemma, from the business owner wiping security footage to the police officer mowing down civilians. Everyone’s hands are bloodied, but what do you expect from a system that will crush you if you don’t apply pressure to someone else?
Despite being a largely contained thriller, Your Lucky Day knows how to eke out plenty of tension by changing up the dynamics of its action. The bodega operates as an everyday setting to place the viewer in something so familiar to let their guard down when the violence erupts. With tight corners and few places to hide, Your Lucky Day maximizes the space by taking the audience into the back, locked in closets, and behind the freezer, finding ways to keep the would-be millionaires on their toes.
An electric thriller with fantastic performances, Your Lucky Day balances its central question with plenty of hearty helpings of moral quandaries to keep the affair fresh and affecting. Balancing human drama with stripped down action sequences inside a well-proportioned set, this Yuletide thriller isn’t just a fun film. It’s a provocative one that puts a magnifying glass up to the idea of the American dream making its nightmarish actuality undeniable. If you come across it online or in theaters, know that it will certainly be Your Lucky Day to catch this one.
Overall Score? 8/10
