'LUCKY' to have got this directed of you before ya tortoise off

Bofsensai

score 8/10

(And incidentally RUINED by its trailer = warning, if can: DO NOT watch trailer first!)

Now well known to have transpired to be HDS's acting swansong - and which he was surely aware likely to be, too* - initially introduced with static west outback like shot, as a tortoise, almost unnoticed, slowly traverses the screen, foreshadowing what would seem to be an equally slow paced dull drag of a film:

ah, but wait; soft: be patient - as you likely have to be at such advanced age as HDS was when he appeared in his final role.
For once you adjust, you begin to be inveigled into what is likely to be an insight into what really is the actual pace of lifestyle for those apparoaching their sunset / shadow years: slow, meticulous, uneventful routine, as is the eponymous 'Lucky' shown slowly, oh so slowly, waking - and walking - from place to place e.g. diner, but the local bar especially, meeting therein various locals and patrons as in the latter, with all their individual life important drives - not least an acting role of David Lynch who has lost (highway?:-) his tortoise (and just incidentally also prompting a surely deliberately Lynchian homage 'red' oddity interlude with Harry in a scene reminiscent of an outtake from 'Mulholland Drive', too!)
N.B. Indeed to the extent that first time director John Carol Lynch would seem to have cast as a sort reunion homage to HDS with some of his erstwhile co-stars of significant film roles, too. (e.g. Tom Skerritt from 'Alien', incidentally riffing on a story that would seem to be based in fact for both)

Overall, Lucky doesn't waste his precious left of life time pontificating over irrelevancies to the aged (even of well meaning unctuous, pulchritudinous (!) visitors), until near the end when he's given a superb monologue to deliver that surely, if not scripted by himself, then written for him to oh so poignantly represent his (real?) life's philosophy - and it's wonderful to hear it delivered (top kudos to writers Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja): as is, too, the (now trailer ruined) famed, drawing to close 'performance' that Lucky weedily but oh so movingly renders at a party - which, in both a grumble at trailer-makers but also warning invocation to any of you who have stll not seen this: I implore you NOT to watch the trailer first, since it plot spoils one of the most lachrymose essential moving scenes I've ever seen on screen - indeed it's a cinematic crime that this key part was put in the trailer because beforehand nothing in the setting of it up has otherwise given you a clue of the most moving scene you are about to witness. (yes, so just to repeat, make sure: shame on you opportunistic trailer makers!)

OK: and at that stage you might think it's been so moving that it's all over; but it's not, with more meandering but which then, well, if you weren't moved to tears before, then the final scene that Lynch sets up with Harry insouciantly breaking into a huge beam of a fourth wall breaking smile (presumably his "ungatz" moment = recall that bar-room monologue), I defy you not to be touched then.

Ah, but and yet and still, Lynch, this supebly empathetic director in his magnaminous debut effort, doesn't close: stay patiently put, for after Harry exits the scene, still he 'directs' yet another slow pace metaphor that'll surely finally bring on your "ungatz" smile - likely along with even more tears (as it did for quietly in the dark cinema) for this gentle tribute.

This is an utterly moving, beautiful love letter to the lost HDS.

*Scriptwriter Sparks has said that this was the case.

Bofsensai 5 October 2018

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4378651/