A wild-looking man (Sam Rockwell, Seven Psychopaths), who looks like he crawled out of a drainpipe, walks into a crowded diner and declares, “I am from the future, and all of this goes horribly wrong.” According to his ravings, in this restaurant is the perfect combination of people to unite and help him prevent an impending apocalypse. Oh yeah, he has a bomb and they are all his prisoners. Against all odds, an assortment of patrons believe him and join his cause. A few others accompany him less willingly. What follows is this rag-tag band’s wild, irreverent, one-night-to-save-the-world quest.
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We’re left to wonder whether this man is for real or he’s mentally ill and has fallen through the cracks in the social safety net. At least initially. It doesn’t take long before the others, and the audience, start to wonder and even buy in. He claims to have done this countless times before, searching for the right combination of people, and knows their names, details about their lives, and information he has no business knowing. Then again, maybe they’re all just as deluded and damaged in their own way. Maybe they actually believe, or maybe they’re all searching for something to believe in.
Some of the side characters are fleshed out and given their own backstories, told through flashback chapters. Others get much less thought and development, and it’s clear from the jump who is going to get what—actors you know or have heard of get the works, the others, not so much. Zazie Beetz (Atlanta) and Michael Pena (Ant-Man) play a harried pair of teachers with their own reasons for embarking on this unhinged journey. Juno Temple’s (Ted Lasso) Susan underwent an unimaginable tragedy, and a surreal aftermath, and is hanging on by a thread, desperate to find anything to cling to. Haley Lu Richardson’s (Support the Girls) Ingrid, a goth loner with a literal allergy to technology, may be the key to it all. A handful of others, like Asim Chaudry, are also included to beef up the numbers a bit, but mostly remain unused.
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Good Luck marks Verbinski's first feature in almost a decade, and he had to fight to get this one made his way, on his terms. That passion and drive shines through. A sense of urgency fuels the film. But that also leads to a feeling of wild, anarchic freedom. Untethered from the studios, no longer beholden to preexisting IP, he’s able to let loose and take big, arcing swings. They don’t always land, especially as the film goes on, but he’s not pulling any punches. Combined with a fully off-leash Rockwell, and you’re onto something.
Of course, the film looks fantastic, even on a limited budget. (Reports have it around the $10 million mark, though I can’t find anything concrete.) Verbinski knows how to put together a slick, sleek movie with a strong visual style, and it has a wide, sprawling feel, despite any limitations. Even within that framework, he and cinematographer James Whitaker make excellent use of what they have. For example, in the confines of the diner, it could have easily fallen into a repetitive, shot-reverse-shot formula. Instead, they find unique, interesting ways to frame, stage, and shoot the action that keeps things from looking bland, and that enhances the off-kilter nature of the narrative.
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At times the script by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters) sounds suspiciously like an old man yelling about kids these days and their cellphones and their hula hoops. Think the Grandpa Simpson fist-shaking meme come to life. But it’s also clever and raucous and deftly paints portraits of wounded people who just might follow an enigmatic weirdo on an unlikely spur-of-the-moment adventure. And this view of the downfall of humanity—social media obsessed, anesthetized to catastrophic events, buried under an endless mountain of information until we feel nothing, leaving us self-interested shells—does seem more likely a self-aware cybernetic defense system coming online and nuking us. Though that does make for awesome action cinema.
Despite a brisk clip and energetic pace, the momentum flags a time or two in the middle act. Whether or not you buy how everything comes together in the end is also going to vary from one individual to the next. And while Verbinski and Robinson generally strike a balance between the disparate tones and genres, there’s occasional friction between these elements.
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Honestly, however, those are relatively minor quibbles. They’ll bother some folks more than others, sure, but most are easy enough to gloss over thanks to the energetic direction, charismatic cast, engaging characters, and oddball conceit. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes big shots and lands most of them. With rowdy humor, a singular hook, and an earnest emotional core, this is thought-provoking, engrossing, and entertaining as hell. In short, everything a movie should be. Let’s hope it doesn’t take Verbinski another decade to drop his next project. [Grade: A-]
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