PicoBlog

The worst-laid plans of cops and robbers go horribly awry in Your Lucky Day, which lives up to its title if you consider it a tribute to Cormac McCarthy’s line from No Country for Old Men: “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” Angus Cloud, the Euphoria breakout who passed away at 25 over the summer, turns in what should have been a star-making turn as a two-bit drug dealer who hits it big by stealing a lottery ticket worth $156 million but fails to consider an exit strategy from the Miami convenience store where he forcefully obtains it. A little bit Reservoir Dogs, a little bit Dragged Across Concrete, writer-director-producer Daniel Brown’s taut thriller extracts every bit of tension imaginable from its elegantly barebones premise.

It does so, in part, by flipping the usual hostage-situation dynamic. A bit of persuasion from the smooth-talking Sterling (Cloud) turns his captives into co-conspirators. It’s Christmas Eve, and everyone else (un)fortunate enough to find themselves at the Sip N Go — owner Amir (Mousa Hussein Kraish) as well as expecting couple Ana Marlene (Jessica Garza) and Abraham (Elliot Knight) — is helpless to stop a shootout that leaves both the true winner (Spencer Garrett) and a would-be hero cop (Sterling Beaumon) dead. They’re also repulsed when Sterling suggests buying their silence with a portion of his ill-gotten gains, at least at first. Everyone has a price, and even a fraction of this particular jackpot is a life-changing sum of money.

Cloud’s performance would be memorable even if it weren’t posthumous. Sterling isn’t exactly a far cry from Fez, the actor’s Euphoria character, but Cloud’s perpetually downcast expression and mumble-rap vocal delivery makes him uniquely compelling whenever he’s onscreen. Not all of his proclamations land: “Nobody ever got rich without doing some crimes” is a bit much, whereas “We all had the same thought; I’m just the one that did it” has its own kind of poetry. In a film that exists almost entirely in a moral grey area, though, Sterling ends up being far from the most objectionable figure. Just as impressive as Cloud is Garza, whose mother-to-be proves to be as cunning as she is pregnant — which is to say, extremely. Cloud is the headliner, but she steals so many scenes that the film ultimately belongs as much to her as it does to him. 

“It’s better to be lucky than good,” Sterling says before his plan inevitably falls apart. That may not be as true of movies as it is of other pursuits, but no matter: Your Lucky Day is good verging on great, and suggests that Cloud was well on his way to becoming great too.

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