Product Details

• Actors: Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams, Michael Peña, Howard Platt, Arden Myrin
• Directors: Neil Burger
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Lions Gate
• DVD Release Date: January 27, 2009
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001KP2J2G
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,774 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Lucky Ones" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

An earnest if not wholly satisfying comedy-drama about an awkward homecoming for three dissimilar Iraq War veterans, The Lucky Ones works best as a vehicle for its interesting lead performances. Tim Robbins transcends his real-life, anti-war reputation by playing Cheever, a Reservist and decent fellow who is injured in Iraq when a porta-potty falls on him. Eager to see his family, he ends up on a road trip with two other soldiers trying to reach their own destinations. There's Colee (Rachel McAdams), a young and earnest woman who enlisted to escape family problems, endured a leg wound and is on her way to meet the family of her boyfriend, who was killed in combat. There's also T.K. (Michael Peña), recruited from a poor family and granted a month's leave after becoming impotent from a wound. The odyssey these characters, initially strangers to each other, share is fairly predictable for anyone who has seen such classic vets-coming-home movies as The Best Years of Our Lives. As Colee, T.K. and Cheever travel together, they encounter what sometimes feels and looks like an alien landscape: people who patronize them, people who despise the war without an inkling of what it's like to endure it, and a host of other exploitative chuckleheads who just don't get it. Inevitably, the trio has only itself to rely upon, to share the knowledge of the war's reality and provide support in ways that are sometimes funny and sometimes poignant. Co-written and directed by Neil Burger (The Illusionist), The Lucky Ones has a rambling structure that causes the film to lose focus. But its heart is in the right place, and Robbins, McAdams and Peña play people one can care about as much as enjoy. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

LUCKY ONES - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sublime road trip with indelible characters, February 16, 2009

By 

Joseph W. (GA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lucky Ones (DVD)

Amazon.com recapped the plot ably if less than enthusiastically, so I'll just jump to the praise. A truly fantastic movie! Intelligent, hilarious, touching, surprising, thoughtful, wonderfully performed, even suspensful. Superlatives do not do this movie justice because each one demands it's own exclamation when instead they are all woven together into the seemless and harmonic beauty that is this film's quiet grandeur. And don't forget it's very funny. So do yourself a great favor and see a movie with characters you will not want to leave, or leave each other. Thanks, and have a nice evening.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK formula film, i.e. the journey that becomes psych'ly deep, etc., November 24, 2009

By 

Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lucky Ones (DVD)

There are so many films like this, some people thrown together in a circumstance - this one coming home from the Iraq War to some bad surprises - and they become friends while traveling and find new meaning. While the actors are quite wonderful, something about it didn't quite ring true for me and there was nothing whatsoever original about it. There are borderline ridiculous many comedic scenes, but the tone is more serious than not. You can't have frolicsome tragedy. McAdams is far too beautiful to be a normal grunt and Robbins' personal crisis is too predictable and conventional. Pena, I thought, was the best: a tightly wound guy who slowly started to fall apart later on. I also liked the presence of the killed boyfriend, who is a very real and evolving character thru the film. Unfortunately, I was kind of waiting for it to end.

Recommended. There are some good parts in it, but it often just didn't work for me.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Movie, December 2, 2009

By 

P. Schumacher (atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lucky Ones (DVD)

"The Lucky Ones" shows that a great movie can be made on a shoestring, without car explosions or special effects or any whizbangery.

All it takes is terrific acting, moving characters, great writing, and appropriate (often spectacular, sometimes grimy) scenery.

This one is the story of three soldiers, on leave from Iraq for wounds, who meet and share a ride--then share much more. They become emotionally close, even spiritually intimate, all the moreso because the civilian worlds they are returning to crumble around them like fading dreams.

Colee (Rachel McAdams) is the youngest, most innocent: wide-eyed, eager, happy, frank, unashamed, friendly, loving, open to anything. She is the forever-child--who learns, but never loses her innocent wonder, no matter how many shocks she endures.

She provides the catalyst for Cheever (Tim Robbins), the old timer who is looking forward to being DONE with the army and war, but whose world collapses and who, the others fear, has reached suicide; and for T.K. (Michael Pena), the young hotshot who has life all figured out, ready for his climb to the top--until nothing works.

It's Colee who points out the wonderful beauty of life they are passing through--which the other two almost miss, and who indicates how they can start over.

The ending is terribly sad and uplifting and scary and hopeless all at once.

There are many "war" movies, and they are pretty much all the same.

This is a "peace" movie, which shows how difficult and how rewarding peace can be--but also how fragile.