LUCKY STRIKE (2026)

            “Lucky Strike” is a caught behind the lines movie set in the Battle of the Bulge. It was directed and co-written by Rob Laurie (“The Outpost”).  He is a West Point graduate. It was filmed at a studio in Bulgaria.

            The film uses the flashback method to tell the story. A Captain (now Colonel) Castle arrives at the home of a Mrs. Caldwell (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). Right off the bat, we know the main character is going to survive. No surprise for a movie like this. (Also, this means you  won’t have to yell at the screen when he shows off his wife’s picture.) Caldwell is bitter because the Army has been holding back her dead husband’s pension. Then its back to the Ardennes Forest for the Battle of the Bulge. It’s the fourth day. You’ll have to take their word for it. If you’re expecting hordes of German tanks, think again. A truckload of black G.I.s is ambushed by a German tank. How is this going to connect to Castle’s story? Wait. Castle is the commander of an engineer company. He is tasked with holding a key crossroads to prevent the Germans from getting to an American fuel depot. He leaves with five men. That’s one small company. And they don’t go to a crossroads, they just sabotage some trees along the road. Bada bing, bada boom, now Castle is on his own far from home. Luckily, he has his trusty “walkie-talkie” which is named “Lassie”. The movie informs the audience that the 1^st SS Panzer Division are a bunch of cold-blooded killers. Do you think Castle will have some encounters with them? Give yourself a cookie if you answered “yes”.

The rest of the film is an odyssey (ironic because one of the previews before the movie was for “The Odyssey”). Castle has a series of vignettes between radio talks to his pessimistic headquarters. Most of those discussions involve the guy on the other end saying “Look, buddy, it’s Hitler’s great offensive. We got bigger problems than rescuing one G.I., even if he is Clint Eastwood’s son.” So, lucky for us, Castle will have to trek to friendly lines. And with a bullet in his thigh. These vignettes include a tragic encounter with a friendly Belgian family, stealing a tank, playing dead, a visit to the truck with the all but one dead black G.I., being chased by artillery, and meeting a another caught behind the lines victim. And then we return to Mrs. Caldwell’s apartment for a twist I bet none of you will see coming. (Try not to laugh, the old people in the theater might be offended.”

            “Lucky Strike” is a WWII movie that would be more comfortable in the 20^th Century. Castle is far from an anti-hero. This is a patriotic film and it finishes with a treacly song written by the director. However, the patriotism is not overdone. Although, the anti-Nazi theme is a bit much. Hell, Castle gets peed on by an SS soldier. It’s low budget, but that mainly applies to the cast. Besides Eastwood, the only actor that most people would recognize is Colin Hanks and he appears for about two minutes. Most of the cast do not have Wikipedia pages. However, the acting is not cringe and Eastwood does fine in a one-dimensional role. He’s stoical and handles wounds like his father. Actually, the movie is the story of a threesome – Castle, a Motorola SCR-300, and Lucky Strikes cigarettes. Cigarettes were a fixture in classic movies, especially WWII movies. It seems anachronistic to feature them in a 21^st Century war movie. And especially odd to feature a specific brand. I did some research and found out Lucky Strikes were one of ten brands (the two others I recognized were Camels and Chesterfields). Before you sniff at this, it turns out the cigarettes play a major role in the plot, albeit a silly one. The cigarettes are in the plot for a twist. The Motorola SCR-100 is in it for the adulation. It was a back-pack style radio with a telephone-style receiver. The movie is meant to give credit to the walkie-talkie (it was the first radio to be called that), but I did not pick up on that since all the radio does is tell Castle to make it on his own. 

            “Lucky Strike” leads with the tried and truthy “inspired by a true story”. As in, there WAS a Battle of the Bulge and there WERE soldiers in it. Several of the vignettes are laughable if you have seen a lot of war movies. I won’t give away those highlights, but you’ll know them when you see them. It was heavily researched by its technical advisor, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He apparently insisted there be snow. However, he had less success on insisting on realism. Could an American soldier drive a German tank? Possibly. Would a soldier in a low budget action film be able to? Of course!

            Eastwood was probably paid more than half the budget, but the movie does not look cheap. The German vehicles will pass muster for all but the most fanatical rivet-counters. There is a column of tanks that does not look CGI. The cinematography is fine. The music does not bombast. And the dialogue is satisfactorily bland. That all spells an average movie. You’ll enjoy it if you don’t want above average. And you don’t have a reaction to Lucky Strike cigarettes. I’m not easily influenced, but I did stop at the concession stand on the way out to ask for a pack of Lucky Strikes. They didn’t have any. Poor marketing.

GRADE = C-

Spoiler alert: I researched the crucial plot point that G.I.s would always light their Lucky Strike from the side with the label. You didn’t want to let the Germans know the campsite was American. My research found that this was one version of the Lucky Strike story. G.I.s would open a pack and immediately turn all the butts around except one.  Thus they lit the label end first to burn it away. They left the last one with the label at the other end as a “give me the luck to get to this one, oh great god of cigarettes.” Another version was they did this just to remind themselves when they got to the last one. If you made it, you had survived for that one pack o time. And later died in bed of lung cancer.