| SEVEN TIMES LUCKY |
 2004 - CanadaDirector: Gary Yates - Reviewed by Vickie
Kevin Pollak stars as Harlan, a schlubby scam artist who's in a bit of a financial bind. With the help of his former-street-kid gal pal, Fiona (Liane Balaban), and scruffy simpleton Sonny (Jonas Cherniak), Harlan concocts a plan to cover his ass and pay off the folks who need paying. The intricacies of the plot are kind of lost on me, as I was never quite sure exactly who was the one waiting for his or her money, or what it had to do with Rolex watches—there are so many people with a stake in the proceedings that I lost count. Along the way we meet assorted nefarious types like Mr. Five Wounds (Gordon Tootoosis), Sacco (Aleks Paunovic) and Eddie (Babz Chula, whom I'm including simply because she has the coolest name EVER), and all kinds of folks then spend the next 80 minutes doublecrossing each other like it's going out of style. Speaking of style, that's my most significant issue with Seven Times Lucky—its overblown attempt to recreate the style of a noir-ish caper through set design, art direction and dialogue. Thing is, though, all that totally unnecessary effort comes across as needlessly confusing and distracting rather than mood-setting. The majority of the sets and props look like something out of the 1930s or 40s. Ancient, decaying apartments with poor lighting (if any), decades-old furnishings, decrepit appliances and even worse décor. At the outset, it seems like suspender-sporting, hat-wearing Harlan is living in a run-down tenement in 1940. But then we see his answering machine (c. 1985) and digital watch (c. 1982) and realize, "Oh wait, this isn't wartime America." He goes out to his boat-like car, which could be something out of the late 1950s or early 1960s, and drives Fiona to a bank machine, so then we think, "Aha, maybe we're in the 1990s." But then we're back in a 1920s building, complete with a bowtie-and-vest clad front-desk attendant who oversees the residents' mail. After a while, all this seemingly "clever" era-jumping became really annoying and super off-putting. I mean, I get it, the filmmakers wanted to play with the perception of time and perhaps pay homage to films gone by, but really. Sometimes enough is enough. All it did was take me out of the movie as I asked myself, "Why is his phone so old? Why are his faucets so old? Why do half the people behave as if they're in present day while the other half seem to think they're in the past?????" The dialogue is similarly corny, and feels like it was lifted from any number of crime films in the genre. Again, people were speaking as if they were living in a bad detective movie. I half expected every line out of Harlan's mouth to end with "doll," "boss," or "see?" (e.g., "I'm gonna get my money, see? And you're gonna help me, doll.") For me, it didn't add to the tone, but yanked out whatever suspension of disbelief remained intact for me and blew it to pieces. Now, having said all that, Seven Times Lucky isn't awful. There are some interesting plot twists, and Liane Balaban is always fun to watch. Kevin Pollak is a talented and underused actor, in my opinion, so it's nice to see him in a lead role for a change. And Ryan Black provides a small but standout supporting role as a young man claiming to be Five Wounds' thug-like nephew. I think he might be my favorite thing about the whole movie, and his role is all of about seven minutes long. But that's only four things out of a myriad of poopy material. So a mildly generous four slices is the best I can do in terms of a rating. |
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I love a good grifter movie as much as the next guy. I take perverse
pleasure in watching a con go down and seeing the machinations grinding
their gears. But I didn't feel much love for this would-be grift flick
that's so weighed down by cliché I wondered a few times whether it's
not meant to be a parody.
