Critic Reviews

An example of robust, muscular filmmaking of the “they don’t make ‘em like this anymore” variety.

As war movies go, this one’s different and often exciting, with several memorable scenes.

The World War II movie Lucky Strike is part survival thriller and part throwback hymn to military heroism. It’s quite possible to appreciate the kill-or-be-killed action, starring Scott Eastwood as a man caught behind enemy lines, even as its Greatest Generation patriotism feels preserved in amber from another era in cinema and history.

Lucky Strike isn’t a raw combat drama so much as a lone-wolf genre film, something that feels tidier and maybe safer. Lurie stages it with skill; it’s not like what happens is predictable. But it’s not enthralling either.

For all its technical impressiveness, Lucky Strike never gathers the narrative momentum and suspense to which it aspires.

Lucky Strike falls apart at many key moments, revealing narrative flaws Lurie planted (or failed to plant) much, much earlier in the film.

Lucky Strike is simultaneously so familiar and so off that it sometimes feels like WW2 movie cosplay. While watching, I thought often about how that is essentially what all period filmmaking is – anyone who's ever seen an unofficial set photo will know what I'm talking about – but whatever movie magic that usually gets us to suspend our disbelief is just totally absent here. Aside from the intellectual curiosity of trying to diagnose that, the viewing experience is fairly dull.

Lucky Strike, a mind-numbingly inert, hyper-patriotic war film, makes little sense and gives even less reason for its existence.