Your Lucky Day (Spoiler: Not Really)

You would get about the same return on your money if you burned it in your front yard as you will from buying state lottery tickets. It turns out the bonfire approach is also safer. When a “lucky” ticket-holder finally “wins,” he gets killed for it before he can even leave the store. However, this film has no sympathy for him, because he was a rich white guy. At least he was not completely sociopathic, unlike the rest of the characters we must spend time with while watching Dan Brown’s Your Lucky Day, which opens tomorrow in theaters.

Sterling got mugged while peacefully peddling drugs, so when the blowhard Mr. Laird starts whooping and hollering he won the lottery, the drug-pusher pulls a gun on him. Thuggish Sterling is not the sharpest tack in the box, so he did not notice the cop heading into the convenience store bathroom. Guns blaze, Mr. Laird is killed, and presumably so is Officer Cody.

Technically, Officer Cody shot Laird, but Sterling would probably be on the hook for both bodies, so he offers the witnesses, the store manager and a married couple, a deal. Help him dispose of the bodies and he will cut them in for a few million. Ana Marlene wrings her hands for a few minutes, but soon they all agree to his A Simple Plan-like proposition. They just don’t realize Officer Cody is not quite dead yet. Only mostly dead.

Just in case you couldn’t pick up on Brown’s class warfare ideology, he starts Lucky Day announcing it is “based on the American dream.” From there it gets even less subtle. Of course, all the cops are corrupt and psychotic. The “protagonists” all have some claim to victimhood, but most of their behavior is just as reprehensible. At some point, you start rooting for the dirty cops, because that way the film will presumably end sooner.

The late Angus Cloud is so scummy as Sterling it ironically undercuts Brown’s clunky class-conscious sermonizing. It tries to build into a Desperate Hours style standoff thriller, but the characters are mostly unlikable symbols, so it is hard to care.

Watching Your Lucky Day will make you feel like you are being held hostage in a dingy convenience store by a gang of masked Bernie Bros. It is an experience you can take a pass on. Not recommended, Your Lucky Day opens tomorrow (11/10) at the Alamo Drafthouse-Lower Manhattan.