Lucky You

Lucky You (2007, Curtis Hanson)
A supremely satisfying movie that I'd hesitate to call a genre picture because Curtis Hanson isn't so much a genre director as he is an old-style studio director moving from subject to subject. His style is spectacularly unshowy so you couldn't say he's trying to "leave his mark" on the genre, but rather respectfully add to it. (Although with the bad response this movie received, it's clear that the patience Hanson has in storytelling is not reflected with modern sensibilities.) He is enormously attentive to his actors: All of the performances have a light yet lived-in quality. Drew Barrymore is luminescent, her singing soft and lovely. Eric Bana's is a restrained, thoughtful performance (so too is Robert Downey, Jr.'s brief cameo). And Robert Duvall embodies his character without seemingly doing anything, and yet his subtle one-upmanship is deeply felt. Hanson is focused on the behavior of these characters and invariably when we feel tension (even from the sunglass-wearing oddball player) it's based on how the characters are interacting with each other from across the table rather than who's about to win the pot. And the score, made up of slide guitars and light piano and peppered with George Jones songs, adds a pleasantly amiable quality to the movie.