Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.



Peter Cattaneo gives us another movie we can really put our arms around. ‘Lucky Break’ doesn’t quite live up to the ‘romp’ status of ‘The Full Monty’, but if you enjoy one, you’re sure to enjoy the other.

Once again, our focus is on a semi-tragic hero whose life has gotten away from him a bit, but is a right enough chap really. Our story, also once again, shows how our hero alters the lives of a hodge-podge crew of supporting characters, mainly by way of his simple, ‘real’, and honest (but not really) approach to life.


This time around, our man is Jimmy (James Nesbitt - fairly popular in the U.K., you may remember him as Pig Finn in ‘Waking Ned Devine’), a poor excuse for a criminal who gets sent up the river after a botched bank robbery. Jimmy is pretty reminiscent of Steve McQueen’s character in ‘The Great Escape’, and that will either explain him quite a bit, or not at all, and either way, it ought to be all you need to know. (This character comparison, by the way, comes complete with Jimmy’s ‘always in the hole’ status, as well as his own version of a mind-numbing ‘time passer’)

Jimmy soon learns that the warden (governor actually) of the prison, Graham Mortimer (Christopher Plummer), is a huge fan of musicals. In fact, he’s written one. Jimmy plays this up to hatch a plan for an escape. The movie then focuses on: putting together the production of this truly goofy musical, learning a good deal about the supporting cast, and getting around the occasional stumbling block.

Of course, there’s also the love story. Annabel (Olivia Williams - ‘Rushmore’, ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘Cromwell & Fairfax’), is the staff psychologist whose job is to try and see that the prisoners are able to make it on the outside when they get out. Naturally, Jimmy and Annabel spend the movie getting better acquainted, and while the whole thing is a bit silly really, it’s done in a way that is acceptable enough.

Towards the end, a few more problems with the escape plan arise, and before it’s over, Jimmy has to ask himself some tough questions, mainly, as expected, re Annabel.


You can almost see the outlines of this movie and ‘The Full Monty’ overlapping, with the possible exception of the part in Monty where two of our main people back out of the thing. We’re dealing, basically, with different facets of humanity here, but we’re dealing with them in pretty much the same way. In retrospect, this pattern detracts a bit from the total effect of the thing, but it certainly didn’t lessen my enjoyment of it as I watched.

Cattaneo knows how to put together a ‘good time’ movie with real emotion and a bit of brains, and he knows how to make characters that not only serve a definite purpose, but also have a bit of meat on them and are believable.

He also knows how to put together a cast (well, assuming he did it really) that can act. What really helped to pull ‘The Full Monty’ up to just that one more notch, was that the supporting cast could be correctly termed ‘support’, and you wouldn’t flinch at calling them ‘a cast’. They were good characters, but they had good actors portraying those characters. We’ve got the same game here. Perhaps to even a greater extent, because some of these characters are easier to go wrong with.


Though ‘Lucky Break’ does deal with some of the standard ‘issues of life’, there isn’t really anything so deep as ‘The Full Monty’ going on here. It’s a little bit more of the fun, and yet, because there isn’t so much of the deep, it doesn’t require quite the same amount of fun. In years to come, you might not remember this one quite so fondly as its brother (though I think I will), but it is definitely a good time.

Recommended: Yes