Maybe it’s because of the casting of Paul Walter Hauser, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Eastwood’s Sully and The 15:17 to Paris while watching The Luckiest Man in America. All three films take a real-life event—undeniably interesting on its own and perfect for a 20-minute news segment—and stretch it to fill 90 minutes. Unnecessary scenes and characters get added or drawn out, and the whole thing starts to feel inflated like a balloon.
The film mostly takes place over a few hours, when Michael Larson, an unemployed ice cream truck driver from Ohio, appeared on the game show Press Your Luck and just kept winning. Spin after spin, to the growing concern of the showrunners, he showed no signs of stopping.
Silly game shows like this are guilty fun to watch—who doesn’t love cheering for the underdog with a shot at easy money? And for a while, the film uses that to its benefit. Watching the reenactment of the competition, especially if you don’t know the true story (I didn’t!), brings a surprising amount of suspense. Every time Larson presses the button, you’re weirdly hooked… until you’re not. The novelty wears off, and like the live audience on set, you start to feel like what was once compelling has become extremely repetitive—and you just want it to end.
That’s more the fault of the premise than the execution. The directing and editing do what they can to keep things dynamic, and the film introduces subplots and side characters to fill time—though most of them go nowhere (poor Maisie Williams). The cast does a solid job selling this as entertainment. Paul Walter Hauser brings a kind of awkward charm to Larson, even if the character isn’t particularly deep. The film tries to land a few emotional punches toward the end, but nothing we’ve seen before gives us much reason to care. Larson’s most compelling trait is simply that he found a flaw in the system.
That said, if Walton Goggins ever stops getting good roles, this movie proves he’d make a fantastic game show host. He’s effortlessly fun to watch—maybe more than anything else in the film.