The Lucky Ones: coming home, hitting the road, and coming to terms with the vagaries of life during wartime

For a film attempting to grapple with a contemporary phenomena—that of American soldiers coming home after serving in Iraq—there’s something decidedly old-fashioned about Neil Burger’s The Lucky Ones, not just because the trauma, sense of displacement and strained interactions with civilians are familiar from previous films about the veterans of Vietnam, Korea or World War II, but because this story so frequently proves itself to be dependent on the sorts of implausible or at least dramatically convenient events—the guitar once owned by Elvis, the camping sex workers, the deus ex machina twister—more commonly associated with movies of old. But come to think of it, this story is actually about, among other things, the capricious nature of luck, so maybe the hokier plot twists should be respected for being somehow all of a piece, a meditation on what it means to feel overwhelmed by destiny, whether its fixed by the stars or by the stars and stripes.

Colee (Rachel McAdams) was shot in the leg. Cheever (Tim Robbins) had a Porta-potty dropped on him. TK (Michael Peña) got shrapnel in his penis, an injury he’s reluctant to discuss since it’s rendered him temporarily impotent. The younger members of this trio are only on leave while only Cheever is home for good, more than happy to say goodbye to martial life and reunite with his beloved wife. The three never met before shared a flight to JFK, but circumstances will conspire to keep them together, even hitting the road for an extended cross-country journey during which they’ll form a sort of substitute family, despite their considerable differences (and despite the fact that TK, while handsome and sometimes charming, can be really annoying, a self-proclaimed expert on everything from booze to golf to foreplay).

Sometimes The Lucky Ones can feel very predictable, especially since the characters’ weak spots are telegraphed so clearly in the first act. Sometimes it can feel sort of predictably unpredictable, such as in the scene with the aforementioned camping hookers. But as it went along and these characters—embodied superbly by all three stars—developed, I’ll be damned if the one truly unpredictable element to this thing wasn’t how funny, warm and moving it could be, sometimes in the most seemingly slight moments, like when Collee genuinely tries to comfort TK with a catalogue of alternative sex remedies, or whenever the trio quietly, pregnantly nod as yet another civilian says to them, “No, thank YOU,” the mantra of all those who can’t come close to grasping just what the hell it is these people are doing over there.