Product Details

• Actors: James Nesbitt, Olivia Williams, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy, Lennie James
• Format: NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005JKQJ
• For more information about "Lucky Break" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots to like, August 19, 2003

By 

Jay Charles - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucky Break (DVD)

I watched this because I watch anything Timothy Spall does. He has a smaller part, but is brilliant, again. Yet everyone else does a fine job a well. Frank harper demonstrates he can play the gamut, as a vicious thug whose look stops clocks. Olivia Williams gradually and reluctantly falls in love, and does so beleivably and tenderly.

There are no caricatures in here, none of the cartoons that people American prison stories. Losers, bad people, and crooks are in prison, and most belong there. But they can change, can grow and can do better.

Warm, funny, understated, and clever. Nice job.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly awful, June 19, 2007

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lucky Break (DVD)

After passing on The Full Monty in favour of Brassed Off, the now all-but defunct Film Four were quick to throw money at Peter Cattaneo's next comedy and confidently launched a huge marketing campaign for Lucky Break secure in the knowledge that they had the big local hit of the year. Subsequent excuses for the film's disastrous performance at the box-office varied from good weather putting people off going to the cinema to the revelation that the screenwriter had done time for IRA offences (subsequently overturned, but still about as endearing to the British public as Al Qaeda are to Americans). For some reason no-one mentioned the fact that it's not any good. At all.

A grab-bag of second-hand ideas from Two-Way Stretch, The Tall Guy and others, it's a laugh-free zone that goes out of its way to avoid surprises while failing to ever find its own tone, nodding to half-baked attempts realism and wildly underdeveloped comedy without ever committing to either. Even the tried-and-trusted routines don't work here: Bill Nighy is just irritating as he tries to splutter some life into unfunny dialogue while Timothy Spall does his dishevelled hamster shtick yet again, while the amateur musical used as a backdrop for the planned prison break seems simply amateurish and unfunny. Quite dreadful.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slow but Sweet Understated Comedy, February 22, 2011

By 

Liz W. "villagebookreview" (Alabama, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lucky Break (DVD)

Repeat-offender Jimmy (James Nesbitt) finds himself doing time after a botched bank job. When the prison warden (Christopher Plummer), an aspiring playwright, proposes that the prison put on a production of his musical, Jimmy and his fellow inmates plan to use the performance as a diversion while they make a get away. Things get complicated, however, when Jimmy falls for the prison's psychologist, Annabel (Olivia Williams). This entertaining black comedy carries some good acting and a marvelously understated sense of humor. The warden's musical, based on the swashbuckling life of Viscount Horatio Nelson, is about as lavish as an elementary school production, and wonderfully dreadful to boot. Although a bit slow at times, patient viewers will find themselves rewarded.