Lucky Ones [Import]

Amazon.com recapped the plot ably if less than enthusiastically, so I'll just jump to the praise. A truly fantastic movie! Intelligent, hilarious, touching, surprising, thoughtful, wonderfully performed, even suspensful. Superlatives do not do this movie justice because each one demands it's own exclamation when instead they are all woven together into the seemless and harmonic beauty that is this film's quiet grandeur. And don't forget it's very funny. So do yourself a great favor and see a movie with characters you will not want to leave, or leave each other. Thanks, and have a nice evening.

There are so many films like this, some people thrown together in a circumstance - this one coming home from the Iraq War to some bad surprises - and they become friends while traveling and find new meaning. While the actors are quite wonderful, something about it didn't quite ring true for me and there was nothing whatsoever original about it. There are borderline ridiculous many comedic scenes, but the tone is more serious than not. You can't have frolicsome tragedy. McAdams is far too beautiful to be a normal grunt and Robbins' personal crisis is too predictable and conventional. Pena, I thought, was the best: a tightly wound guy who slowly started to fall apart later on. I also liked the presence of the killed boyfriend, who is a very real and evolving character thru the film. Unfortunately, I was kind of waiting for it to end.

Recommended. There are some good parts in it, but it often just didn't work for me.

"The Lucky Ones" shows that a great movie can be made on a shoestring, without car explosions or special effects or any whizbangery.

All it takes is terrific acting, moving characters, great writing, and appropriate (often spectacular, sometimes grimy) scenery.

This one is the story of three soldiers, on leave from Iraq for wounds, who meet and share a ride--then share much more. They become emotionally close, even spiritually intimate, all the moreso because the civilian worlds they are returning to crumble around them like fading dreams.

Colee (Rachel McAdams) is the youngest, most innocent: wide-eyed, eager, happy, frank, unashamed, friendly, loving, open to anything. She is the forever-child--who learns, but never loses her innocent wonder, no matter how many shocks she endures.

She provides the catalyst for Cheever (Tim Robbins), the old timer who is looking forward to being DONE with the army and war, but whose world collapses and who, the others fear, has reached suicide; and for T.K. (Michael Pena), the young hotshot who has life all figured out, ready for his climb to the top--until nothing works.

It's Colee who points out the wonderful beauty of life they are passing through--which the other two almost miss, and who indicates how they can start over.

The ending is terribly sad and uplifting and scary and hopeless all at once.

There are many "war" movies, and they are pretty much all the same.

This is a "peace" movie, which shows how difficult and how rewarding peace can be--but also how fragile.