User Reviews

Based on Ruth Rendell's shortish novel Lake of Darkness, this made-for-British-TV film rises to the level of Hitchcock. I know the label is too often applied to films in exaggeration or flat out error. But trust me, Dead Lucky is the real article. It is peopled by the dotty bumblers and ineffectuals from the working class and petite bourgeoisie backgrounds that made Hitch's early British films such a delight. (--Say, before Jesse Royce Landice in a mink hat and stole, gibbering about The Hamptons, came to epitomize the Hitchcock stock-in-trade dotty character.) These in-good-faith types are wholly inadequate to the task of coming to terms with a truly evil person in their midst when he arrives in the person of an apparently mentally-deficient assassin named Finn.

Along the way, our nominal hero does a fair amount of struggling with impulses he dares not fully own. In all of this, there is a delicious irony at work that Hitchcock would have loved. The assassin is perfectly centered, knowing who and what he is about, while the mature hero flails about like a teenager trying to discover what he wants out of life. The assassin "notices things", while the bourgeois boobs, including our hero, seem credibly oblivious to everything until it hits them over the head. Thus, the nominal villain of the piece is in ways more admirable than the poor victims he will set upon. And we eventually come to understand that the hero is as empty as we first take the villain to be.

None of this is forced, and it moves at the easy pace of life as it is lived. It is a quiet film, one that shocks you doubly, when the fireworks begin, for eschewing Hollywood bombast.

A solid Ten Stars. See it.

"Dead Lucky" was made by the BBC for TV, shown in America on A&E, then released on video. It remains largely unknown to American viewers.

It's a suspenseful mystery film of the sort the British excel at. The plot depends on deception and irony, and requires close attention, stimulating much thought on several topics.

The film focuses on Martin Urban, a prosperous young accountant, and his friend, Tim Sage, who meet after not having seen each other for quite a while. During this initial conversation, Tim urges Martin to play the football pools (somewhat like the American lotteries), but Martin hasn't a clue as to how to do this. As a financially well off man, Martin has not concerned himself with lottery tickets. A week or so later, when Martin has Tim to dinner, Tim tells Martin how to play the pools and provides Martin with a series of numbers to play. On a whim, Martin plays and wins 150,000 pounds, which he doesn't reveal to Tim. Nor does Martin share any of his winnings with Tim.

Martin's denial of aid to Tim derives largely from Martin's refusal to accept his own homosexuality and acknowledge that he is sexually attracted to Tim. A dream sequence makes explicit Martin's desire for Tim. If Martin gives some of his winnings to Tim, Martin thinks this will acknowledge Tim's importance in his life. And Martin refuses to give Tim this importance because of what Martin would have to face about himself.

However, Tim knows that Martin has won the pools because he recalls the numbers that he told Martin to play, and when Martin doesn't offer to share the winnings with Tim, Tim sets into motion a revenge plan. The plot is too complex to detail here, but it has many fascinating twists and surprises before it culminates in disaster for several of the characters.

Because Martin refuses to accept his homosexuality, he is easy prey to Tim's revenge plot, which turns on Martin's desire to please his parents by marrying and Martin's wanting to be thought of as "just one of the guys" and "a regular fellow" by his coworkers.

The film also asks, What is charity? Who best deserves our charity? Friends? Neighbors? Someone to whom we owe something? Strangers? And in what manner should charity be given?

Martin is a fraud because he won't face the truth about himself. And this fraudulence carries over into his life at large, best exemplified in his charitable gestures. Martin does his good deeds in the spirit of noblesse oblige, coldly and impersonally, a rich man helping the little people. Martin means well, but there's no soul, no love, in his charity, and it leads to disaster.

The film is well cast and performed. Nicholas Farrell is good at conveying the stuffy, upper-class Martin. And Harriet Bagnall is particularly good as Francesca, appearing first as a sympathetic woman and then revealing herself as hard and calculating.

While working well as a suspense film, the film is multi-layered with meanings and will well repay your time, if you like films that make you think.

Note: Watch the closing credits, which reveal important information about Theodore Finn's fate. Also, "Lake of Darkness" by Ruth Rendell, the novel upon which the film is based, is an interesting book, filling out many details--particularly about Tim Sage's sexual history--that the film didn't have time for.