Luck: "Pilot" Review

Luck, the new HBO drama series executive produced by titans David Milch and Michael Mann, follows Chester "Ace" Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), who is released from prison after serving three years, having taken the fall for others because that's what an old school street guy with a code of honor does. But now Ace is back and wants what he's got coming to him, and what the aging gambler/wheeler dealer wants revolves around the Santa Anita racetrack. Luck's world is completely devoted to the inner workings of horse racing and the almost anthropological insight into daily life at the aforementioned racetrack. There could be a zombie apocalypse going on outside, but by God there are still races to bet on!

Ace's storyline is just one of several subplots in the intricately woven pilot scripted by Deadwood creator Milch and directed by Mann, who oversaw TV classics such as Miami Vice and Crime Story before segueing into feature films like Heat. Luck's many story threads and characters include: Walter Smith (Nick Nolte), a.k.a. "The Old Man," a horse whisperer-type trainer/owner of a promising colt and who is haunted by a dark past; Turo Escalante (John Ortiz), a rather shady horse trainer who deals with jockey Leon (Tom Payne) and his stuttering agent Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind); and a quartet of degenerate gamblers – Marcus (Kevin Dunn), Lonnie (Ian Hart), Jerry (Jason Gedrick), and Renzo (Ritchie Coster, the Chechen gangster from The Dark Knight) – who are angling to win a fortune at the track. The ensemble also includes Dennis Farina as Ace's right-hand-man and horse-owning front Gus, Jill Hennessy as Turo's horse vet Jo, and Kerry Condon as Rosie, an Irish-born aspiring jockey who works for Walter.


Milch and Mann have never tried to make material that would be easily digestible for the masses, or even easily understood given their penchant for theatrical dialogue and streetwise vernacular that may be authentic but is hardly quick to grasp for the lay person. While I didn't have too much trouble grasping what the characters were saying about gambling and racing, I get why others would. It's not unlike Shakespeare, where you might not be able to always wrap your head around the language, but if the actors' delivery conveys the intent then you'll eventually grasp the emotional meaning of the words. Still, Milch and Mann show no interest in trying to ease viewers into Luck's world; they simply cast you in headfirst and leave it up to you to play catch-up. Not everyone will accept that challenge, so the show will undoubtedly lose its fair share of viewers as a result.

While Luck may be challenging for the ear, it's definitely a treat for the eye. Mann shoots the horse race scenes like he did the opening boat race in the Miami Vice movie or the boxing bouts in Ali; you are right there with the jockeys and horses and feel the intensity and speed of it all. There are a lot of pretty close-ups of horses' eyes and atmospheric shots such as steam rising from a horse's body. But the real charm of Luck is in its stellar ensemble cast, who bring life and humanity to Milch's uncompromising words and to Mann's slick, but emotionally aloof directing.

Clearly, this is Hoffman's show and he doesn't disappoint, giving a tightly-wound, slow-burn performance as Ace, a man so coiled that when he finally does explode in rage it has far more impact. Hoffman's edgy work here seems like a direct descendant of his turn in the underrated 1978 crime drama Straight Time. Hoffman receives great support from the unsung Dennis Farina, with each character knowing the other so well that we feel like we're eavesdropping on an old married couple's shorthand conversations. Nolte continues to cement his position as American acting's great broken soul with his understated, lonesome portrayal of Walter, a man who likely communicates better with horses than he does with people.

Sucking on an oxygen mask and tooling around in a wheelchair, Dunn is the standout among the quartet of ne'er-do-wells who practically call the racetrack home. Ortiz is suitably intense as Turo, but his accent is so thick that he's almost Bane-like in his incomprehensibility. And if nudged just a bit out of the darkness, Richard Kind's nebbish Joey could be at home in a Woody Allen film; he could also easily become the show's most grating character. The female characters played by Condon and Hennessy will hopefully get more to do in future episodes besides dutifully tending to the horses as there really wasn't much to them here.

Like Boardwalk Empire or Deadwood, Luck is a show that isn't screaming for you to find its characters likable or even particularly sympathetic, but you will find them intriguing. But will viewers become as enamored of Santa Anita as they did Prohibition-era Atlantic City or a Wild West boomtown? My hunch is no, as the racetrack is a hermetically sealed realm that doesn't exactly allow for a wide variety of situations for the characters to be faced with. Luck certainly isn't for everyone, but the pilot is a promising beginning. However, it will take a few more laps around the track before Luck can be named a champ or an also-ran.

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Luck premieres Sunday, January 29th at 9pm on HBO. Jim Vejvoda is the Executive Editor in charge of IGN Movies. He's also the only porn legend to also be a Rhodes scholar. You can follow him on Twitter at @StaxIGN or on MyIGN.

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