Lucky Strike (2026)
Directed by: Rod Lurie
Premise: Set during the Battle of the Bulge, an American solider (Scott Eastwood) is wounded and stranded behind enemy lines.
What Works: The success of Lucky Strike hinges upon Scott Eastwood. He’s the only actor on screen for long stretches of time but Eastwood is interesting enough to command our attention. He plays the role as vulnerable and human as opposed to a mythic war hero. In the early portion of the story, Eastwood’s character leads a group of soldiers on a mission and his interactions with them and his later encounters with civilians and German soldiers evidences his character. Lucky Strike benefits from its intimate scale. A curious theme emerges. While navigating through the front, Eastwood’s character must figure out who is a friend and who is a foe. That challenge sets up the best moment of Lucky Strike in which Eastwood’s character meets someone who might be an Allied soldier or might be a Nazi in disguise. The design of Lucky Strike is impressive, especially the costuming and the weathered look of the sets. The violence of Lucky Strike is appropriately brutal. The movie is not unnecessarily gory but there is a blunt matter-of-factness to the violence that gives the film an edge. War films can sometimes slip into sentimentality but Lucky Strike doesn’t do that. The scrappiness and directness of the filmmaking suits the efficiency of the storytelling.
What Doesn’t: There is a lot of credibility in the production design of Lucky Strike but that effort is undone by the look of the cinematography. Lucky Strike often has a digital sheen that is too clean and looks too contemporary for a World War II movie. The sterility of the images makes some of it look fake. Eastwood’s character is injured early on in Lucky Strike, causing him to walk with a limp. That injury is inconsistent. At times Eastwood’s character walks with a limp but at other moments he gets around just fine. Lucky Strike includes a wraparound sequence that bookends the story. Sometime after the war, Eastwood’s character meets the woman who built the radio that was critical to his survival. The film doesn’t need the wraparound. It doesn’t add anything and the scene at the beginning dispels the suspense by revealing that Eastwood’s character survives.
Bottom Line: Lucky Strike is a competent if unremarkable war film. The core of the story works due to its intimate scale and Scott Eastwood’s performance. Lucky Strike is saddled with baggage at the beginning and the end of the story that dilutes the brutal perspicuity that’s so effective throughout the middle.
Episode: #1104 (June 21, 2026)