Review: Lucky Star (2024

Lucky (Terry Chen) is spiraling out of control. We can see this in the well-crafted, representative first scene of Gillian McKercher’s Lucky Star, which shows our protagonist on his cellphone in a parking lot begging a friend for an e-transfer to cover an emergency car repair. As he talks, the camera rotates around the stationary Lucky, revealing a casino in the background as well as Lucky’s deceptions. We will go on to see Lucky borrow money from his university student daughter, Grace (Conni Miu), and access hidden deposits of cash stowed around his house. We wince as Lucky makes up excuses and lies to tell his wife, Noel (Olivia Cheng). In fact, Lucky lies to everyone around him, while he bugs everyone but his wife and youngest daughter (Summer Ly) for a couple hundred bucks or just a small loan for the latest emergency, fake or real. “I hate to ask but….You know I’m good for it.”

As the title, Lucky Star, foreshadows, Lucky’s troubles are a combination of character flaws and a run of bad luck. Lucky is a supposedly reformed gambler who now runs a small tech repair and refurbishing shop, and he seems to be the type of guy who is always one payment behind on every bill. We also see Lucky get sucked into an income tax repayment scam, which pushes everything in his unstable life from bad to worse. McKercher balances the roles of personality and circumstance in driving the narrative, which is one reason her film seems true to life and avoids becoming a cautionary parable.

McKercher also sets Lucky’s troubles alongside the troubles of the rest of his family, to allow the audience to judge their different approaches to adversity. His wife, Noel, will have to decide whether to keep or return a luxury watch that one of her top customers forgets in the dressing room. Their elder daughter, Grace, is struggling to pass a last big exam (the winter holidays setting strikes an odd chord with the last exam and graduation subplot). The younger daughter gets the least screentime, but we do see the impact of the family tensions on her, as she listens in on the couple’s fights from the other room. All of this is well-drawn, realistic indie storytelling.

Lucky Star is also a window onto Chinese-Canadian culture in the sprawling suburbs of Calgary, Alberta. There is a Christmas tree in Lucky’s living room, and the family celebrates after Grace’s last exam around a big round Chinese restaurant table. The cultural touches here and there provide a lived-in background world to the family’s storyline without ever feeling forced or crammed in. This is yet another way the film rings true.

Although McKercher’s direction succeeds in many respects, the film’s success hinges on Terry Chen’s capable central performance. Chen plays Lucky as an affable father with a desperate edge: he has tattoos and a cool haircut and takes moments to be kind and present with his kids, while other times snapping in rage at his wife. We can see his personality being stretched in different ways. Olivia Cheng does her best to convey some dimensions to the wife, but she is given too many lingering shots after events and too little else to do. Conni Miu’s elder daughter seems to have more going on than is present onscreen. I wonder if a more developed subplot for Grace was trimmed out at some point.

The underdeveloped supporting characters point to the main issue that prevents this good film from being better. There is a lot of potential here to tap into real energy, but McKercher always takes a step back to deflate tension, whether in the narrative or for the characters. The film lacks a strong narrative engine to ratchet up the tensions in the story. Things culminate and end in a fairly expected way. The direction keeps what could be a truly gripping, even intense series of events in the realm of slow-paced indie drama, relying too much on a repetitive toolkit to convey emotion. There are too many slow zooms in on characters’ faces to convey tensions, and too many scenes broken up by quiet shots of cars driving and the city in winter.

With a running time below 90 minutes, the pacing doesn’t prove fatal, but there is certainly potential left on the back burner with these concepts and characters. It might have drawn the film away from its slice-of-life qualities, but I couldn’t help but wish we had a little Safdie Brothers-style intensity in the storytelling, even in just a few scenes.

6 out of 10

Lucky Star (2024, Canada)

Written and directed by Gillian McKercher; starring Terry Chen, Olivia Cheng, Conni Miu, Summer Ly, Andrew Phung, John Dylan Louie.

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