FULL SPOILER ASSESSMENT: I won’t be seeing Rod Lurie‘s Lucky Strike until tomorrow afternoon, but I’m told that while the surviving-alone-during-the-Battle-of-the-Bulge part is fine, Lurie and co-screenwriter Marc Frydman have inserted or added on a virtue-signalling denouement involving a character played by Aunjanue Ellis Taylor, and that this argues with the social-cultural battleground reality. Maybe. We’ll see.
Variety review: “And when the movie finally does make its plea for relevance, which hinges on the life-saving importance of Scott Eastwood‘s Motorola FM radio, it seems to come out of another film entirely — namely, Hidden Figures (2016), with its homage to the diversity of unsung scientists.
“Lucky Strike presents Lurie the war-film director in miniature, and there’s no shame in that. But what the film suggests is that he shouldn’t be shying away from the combat maximalist inside him.”
EXTRA DOUBLE TRIPLE SPOILER WARNING: How the hell could Aunjanue Ellis Taylor fit into this December 1944 Bastogne scenario, given that female POCs were nowhere close to the action? Well, her “Mrs, Caldwell” character is not in Europe, for one thing. We’re told, intially via flash-forward, that she was a super-bright woman who designed the Motorola FM radio that ultimate saved Eastwood’s life, and so after the war he drops by to pay his respects and, to show his gratitude, helps her with a pension problem.
But this mostly seems like another movie, I’m hearing. A tack-on. It’s one of those denouements that says “the official movie is over, and this is the surprise twist at the end.” And yet Lucky Strike is based on an allegedly true story that a teenaged Frydman got from a WWII veteran…straight from the horse’s mouth.
I’m very much looking forward to enjoying the meat of Lucky Strike. The violent action and evasion stuff in the bitter Bastogne cold, I mean. I’ll file as soon as I can tomorrow afternoon or evening.