‘The Luckiest Man in America’ Review: Paul Walter Hauser Gives a Winning Game Show Performance
For a film about a game show surrounding the pushing of a button at just the right moment, it’s fascinating how “The Luckiest Man in America” goes out of its way to never fall into a pattern. Whenever you think you’ve got a read on what it’s going for, the film will dart in another direction and throw out what it’d just been doing moments prior.
Though one could call it a thriller based on a true story about a man who rigged a game show, it also has the heart of a dramedy hidden away somewhere that you occasionally catch flashes of under the brightly colored studio lights. With Paul Walter Hauser capturing the specific quirks and buried anxieties of the titular “luckiest man,” it’s a film that provides a strange snapshot — even if it may fade away just as quickly.
When further complemented by a great sense of style and excellent production design, you’re willing to mostly overlook any of the moments where it starts to drag. Much like the crowd getting caught up in the story of its central character and his attempts to take home as much cash as he can, it’s an odd duck you ultimately can’t help getting won over by, little by little.
The film, which premiered Thursday at the Toronto International Film Festival, begins with a man who is already lying. Michael Larson (Hauser) is pretending to be someone else so that he can get an audition for the 1980s game show “Press Your Luck.” He’s caught almost immediately, but his story wins over the co-creator (David Strathairn), who puts him on despite the casting director (Shamier Anderson) not buying into his whole deal for a second.
After a bit of a rocky start and some swearing that has to be cut from the broadcast, Michael begins winning. Over and over, he keeps pressing the button at the exact right moment to get thousands upon thousands of dollars and not get sent back to zero. While the producers of the show are initially overjoyed, the production booth soon goes quiet as they begin to suspect he may be cheating — and the money he is winning could result in them being potentially fired.
There are gags scattered throughout, with the always perfect Patti Harrison doing comedic wonders with a tragically small part as another contestant and Walton Goggins expertly capturing the rehearsed charisma of the game show’s host, though it increasingly feels like the film is just about letting the chips fall where they may rather than getting too caught up in the details. The way that the perplexed producers in the booth will go from utter elation to frantic panicking and then repeat it once more is good fun, making clear that all of this is just about them spinning it however they can so it seems like they’re in control.
A deeper read could be made about the real rigged game being the one Michael was trying to live every day as the film brings his complicated world outside the studio in, though that feels like a bit of a stretch. In reality, the focus is primarily on just seeing him go on a run that nobody seems able to stop. It’s like the way everything playing out was always inevitable, but also insufficient to really help him.
Directed by Samir Oliveros from a script he co-wrote with Maggie Briggs, there are moments where the film feels of a piece with the rather great recent horror film “Late Night With the Devil.” It isn’t as good as that, ultimately feeling a little too confined for its own good, but there is still a shared interest in the way productions can be peeled back to reveal the more painful anxieties of everyone on the stage.
The way the staff of the show begin to turn on each other, even going so far as to betray and backstab, is played rather straight, even as it is quite silly. However, this makes sense in the world of the film, as all of the characters are deadly serious about this whole operation and will do whatever they can to make sure it goes right. You feel the tension of the game show’s production just as you can see the film similarly struggling to keep things moving.
Watching the same button pushing and winning on a loop is something that could get real tired real fast, but “The Luckiest Man in America” finds ways to shake this up. While it is far from being a horror movie like “Late Night With the Devil,” the way the sounds of the lights begin to hum and the claustrophobic close-ups increase provides a haunting undercurrent to it all.
This variation also gives us a glimpse into Michael’s state of mind and how, despite how charming he is on the air, reality is more complex. An almost surreal diversion onto another set, where he stumbles onto a talk show of some kind, lets his fears come pouring out. In this scene, even when the character could be rather superficial elsewhere, Hauser is able to bring out more textures to the man. But this is only an interlude as, after all, the show must always go on.
There are some final odd emotional notes that aren’t completely earned by the time the show’s production eventually comes to a close, but this is forgivable as “The Luckiest Man in America” still never falls into being overly schmaltzy. If anything, for all the winnings that Michael steadily accumulates, the losses loom on the corners of the frame. Even when you see him smiling and having the time of his life on his favorite game show, the lights always go down eventually.
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