Lucky Strike

by Mike McGranaghan

Rod Davis Lurie has a profound appreciation for the military. A graduate of West Point, he went on to serve in the U.S. Army, where he was an Air Defense Artillery officer. His previous films include The Outpost, a harrowing true story about a group of American soldiers trying to fend off an attack from the Taliban. Lurie’s latest effort, the WWII drama Lucky Strike, is similarly an ode to the endurance of our troops. It, too, is based on actual events and avoids jingoism in favor of sincere, heartfelt admiration.

Colonel Castle (Scott Eastwood) and his crew are sent to place explosives that will halt a line of German Panzer tanks. The mission goes sideways, leaving him the sole survivor. Now trapped behind enemy lines, Castle is forced to make a 30 kilometer trek to the nearest rally point. Along the way, he finds himself endangered several times over. His only lifeline is the new radio he’s been given; it allows contact with home base so they will know how he’s progressing.

The film has a framing device in which Castle visits a woman named Mrs. Caldwell (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and tells her his story. We don’t know why until Lucky Strike circles back to it at the end, at which point the connection proves extremely moving.

Lurie knows how to shoot a scene involving military action, and there are several nail-biting sequences here. He smartly doesn’t depict Castle as a Rambo-type superhero. The colonel can – and does – get injured along the way. Wartime violence is portrayed with realistic danger as opposed to the type that’s amped up or “Hollywoodized” to thrill the audience. Even though the framing device lets us know he lives through the ordeal, watching him utilize professional skills to outmaneuver the Nazis who want to kill him is highly suspenseful.

The driving idea behind the movie is that competence takes you a long way. If you know how to do your job really, really well, few problems are insurmountable. Lucky Strike, which derives its name from the soldiers’ preferred cigarette brand, celebrates military preparedness, along with the resolve soldiers had to show during WWII, in particular. Without these things, the world might be a very different place today. I like the straightforward, non-political respect the film pays to the heroes who stood up against Nazism.

There are one or two slow spots in Castle’s journey, and most of the supporting characters are thinly sketched. Eastwood is solid and stoic in the lead role, though, and Ellis-Taylor is excellent as always. Their performances provide an emotional center that adds resonance to the combat scenes. Lucky Strike works as a war film, a survival story, and as a tribute to the men and women whose contributions made all the difference during the second World War.

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