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Writer/Director Dan Brown’s feature debut, Your Lucky Day, elevates a simple concept with palpable tension and intense confrontations. A convenience store at Christmastime transforms into a harrowing battleground when a winning lotto ticket emerges, creating an intense thriller filled with surprise escalations and propulsive action. It’s not just the narrative turns and bleak authenticity that makes Your Lucky Day winsome, but the Christmas caper’s daring commitment to nihilism.
An average night becomes anything but for six strangers at a convenience store around Christmas. A criminal, Sterling (Angus Cloud), arrives at the store in a foul mood, having just lost valuables to thieves. When a wealthy man discovers he’s just won the $156 million jackpot, Sterling holds him at gunpoint. Rookie cop Cody (Sterling Beaumon) attempts to intervene but botches it so spectacularly that it winds up becoming a lethal hostage standoff that also traps the store’s owner, Amir (Mousa Hussein Kraish), and expecting couple Ana (Jessica Garza) and Abraham (Elliot Knight) in the crossfire.
While Cloud, to whom this film is affectionately dedicated, kicks off the events with inciting violence, Your Lucky Day wrings much of its tension from the way it cleverly maneuvers its characters on the board to shift allegiances and expectations. Cloud’s Sterling may be a criminal, but his motivations are relatable and empathetic. Once the core group is assembled at the store, Brown spreads the focus on the ensemble, escalating the tension with the introduction of corrupt cops entering the fray. But it’s Garza who ultimately emerges as the film’s not-so-secret weapon thanks to Ana’s impressive character arc and Garza’s primal portrayal of a pregnant woman trying to survive.
Set mostly within the convenience store, Brown finds innovative ways to prevent the single-location thriller from getting stagnant. The staging and maximizing of space are effective, and it’s bolstered by knowing when to layer in more narrative complications, violent attacks, and action thrills that keep the momentum on a steady incline. It builds to a deeply satisfying conclusion that isn’t afraid to nestle hope within a largely cynical outlook on humanity. There’s an authenticity to characters that operate in shades of gray; nothing is morally black and white here, and it adds complexity.
Your Lucky Day approaches a well-worn concept with style and bold storytelling choices. There’s biting commentary found within its examination of how far people will go for financial security and wealth, particularly regarding those that are meant to keep law and order. The violence hits hard, and the thrills come fast and steady. Brown removes any sense of safety straight away by communicating that no one is safe here, ensuring this thriller delivers on tangible tension made even more breathless by how inherently relatable the premise and its characters are rendered.
The Christmas setting only underscores Brown’s themes of how farcical the American Dream is. One single piece of paper holds the key to financial freedom for a group of characters, and Brown uses it to craft an intense siege thriller filled with characters making surprising choices and moral concessions. Anchored by Garza’s charismatic, primal turn, Your Lucky Day makes for an impressive debut that’ll leave you on edge.
Your Lucky Day premiered at Fantastic Fest. Well Go USA will release the film later this fall, with release date TBA.