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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 25, 2008

Updated:

THE LUCKY ONES **

Soldiers might be clamoring to re-enlist if they all saw as much action in their homecoming as the threesome in "The Lucky Ones." Returning to combat could seem like a picnic in comparison with the tumult these three endure once back on U.S. soil.

"The Lucky Ones" is the latest casualty in Hollywood's unsatisfying parade of war-on-terror dramas, a movie built on improbabilities.

Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Pena manage occasional moments of humor and pathos as three wounded Iraq War veterans on an impromptu road trip across America.

But mostly, the screenplay by director Neil Burger and co-writer Dirk Wittenborn forges a false camaraderie by hurling the three lead players into perpetual artificial situations.

Beginning with a blackout that forces them to rent a car and drive rather than fly, "The Lucky Ones" tosses out one convenient contrivance after another to bond these battle-scarred strangers together, culminating in a preposterous encounter with a tornado that seems to blow in from some action flick playing in the next theater.

Though each comes with a fairly detailed life story, the characters themselves feel like hollow creations, deliberately designed as utter opposites so the filmmakers can show us how we're all really the same inside.

Robbins plays Fred Cheever, a sturdy family man eager to return home to his wife and teenage son in the St. Louis suburbs.

Pena is T.K. Poole, a cocky sergeant headed to Las Vegas to seek "professional" sex therapy to restore his male plumbing, which is on the blink from a shrapnel wound that he fears would diminish him in the eyes of his fiancee.

McAdams is Colee Dunn, a Southerner who has taken nothing but hard knocks in life yet retains her cheery optimism as she carts a fallen comrade's valuable guitar back to his parents, who coincidentally also live in Vegas.

Seated near one another on a flight from Germany to New York, the three then end up sharing a minivan and all kinds of fabricated adventures meant to turn them from passing acquaintances into comrades in arms.

Though our heroes don't always get what they want, the road manages to toss up precisely what they need. Unfortunately, there's little subtlety to the roadblocks, detours, U-turns and pit stops Burger and his team concoct.

104 minutes; R (profanity and some sexual content)

David Germain,

The Associated Press

CHOKE

In "Choke," Sam Rockwell plays Victor Mancini, a young man who purposely chokes on food in restaurants, looking for well-off patrons to give him the Heimlich maneuver, in hopes that their saving his life will tie them to him forever. This is appropriate: Why shouldn't a movie called "Choke" take off from a premise that's hard to swallow?

But then, this movie tries to cram a lot of things down your throat. Victor's mom (Anjelica Huston) is suffering from dementia and thinks Victor is someone else when he visits her care facility, where Victor has seemingly slept with all the women on staff and flirts with all the female patients. Victor is also a sex addict, but he doesn't make it to rehab meetings because he's out in the hallway or restroom having sex with other attendees. Victor also works at a historical park, where the boss (Clark Gregg, who also wrote and directed the movie) insists that everyone speak in period language.

Gregg, a first-time director who adapted the movie from Chuck Palahniuk's 2001 novel, makes a valiant attempt at turning it into a surreal romantic comedy, with Victor eventually trying to legitimately connect with a hospital worker (Kelly Macdonald). The movie gets better as it goes along, with a couple of good second-half twists, and it has a few inspired vignettes and even some touching moments along the way. It also has an icky, gratuitous sequence about Victor having a one-nighter with a woman who has a rape fantasy.

A small percentage of the moviegoing audience will probably love what Gregg has done, but the majority won't have the patience for it. It does appear, however, that this will have a long future as a midnight movie.

92 minutes; R (strong sexual content, nudity, profanity)

Robert Philpot,

McClatchy Newspapers

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