PLOT: A wounded American soldier is trapped behind German lines during the Battle of the Bulge.
REVIEW: War movies can be tricky. They can be powerful, gripping pieces of cinema or painfully boring history lessons where everyone sounds like they’re reading from a museum plaque. And even when they’re good, there’s always someone ready to point out that the boots are wrong, the gun wasn’t used until six months later, or the cigarettes are being smoked from the wrong end. Lucky Strike has moments where it works as a tense World War II survival thriller, but it also feels like the better version of the movie is constantly fighting to get out.
Directed by Rod Lurie, Lucky Strike follows Captain John Castle (Scott Eastwood), an American soldier trapped behind German lines during the Battle of the Bulge. Armed mostly with his instincts and a military radio, he has to navigate freezing territory, Nazi patrols, and one impossible situation after another. Now, I love a good lone man-on-a-mission movie, and this film has the bones for a tense survival story. Once the film finally becomes about one wounded soldier trying to survive in enemy territory with almost no backup, it starts to work.
However, just like the cigarette brand itself, getting there is a drag.
The first half hour in particular is rough. The dialogue is so on the nose that every character sounds like they’re speaking from a box labeled “serious World War II movie.” No one talks like a human being. It reminded me of something out of Tropic Thunder, or that episode of Friends where Joey shares a scene with Gary Oldman in a World War I movie. Everyone is trying so hard to sound important that the movie starts to feel like self-parody. At one point, someone says something along the lines of, “In 80 years, people will remember this battle.” Get it??? Because it was 80 years ago. Sure, it’s true, but that’s also some eye-rolling shit.
That’s what makes the middle section such a relief. Once Castle is alone, Lucky Strike becomes quieter, more visual, and much more gripping. Eastwood is pretty solid here, despite the script doing him very few favors. He has the look and screen presence for this kind of throwback war thriller, and he’s at his best when the movie lets him tell the story through reaction and physicality instead of clunky dialogue. The less he says, the better he is. That may sound like a backhanded compliment, but in a movie like this, physical acting matters. And just like the heavy radio he hauls everywhere, he carries this film.
Then there’s Colin Hanks, who shows up for what feels like about a minute and then vanishes. But I gotta tell ya, it was a bit of a trip watching two Hollywood legacy kids share a World War II scene. Nepo baby jokes aside, both are fine actors in their own right. It was just some wasted talent on Hanks.
The German scenes are a little more complicated. Not subtitling every Nazi conversation helps create tension because it puts the audience closer to Castle’s perspective. The issue is that if you happen to remember the German you took in high school, those scenes become a lot less mysterious. Their dialogue is just as clichéd as the English dialogue, sometimes to the point where it borders on a South Park version of Nazi movie dialogue or a Rammstein song.
Visually, Lucky Strike looks great. The cinematography is easily one of the strongest parts of the movie, with gorgeous images and a few very in-your-face camera movements that give the survival scenes real punch. Now, on the flip side, there was a random and jarring POV shot where a soldier is talking to him which felt like a cut scene from Call of Duty. You can tell the movie is chasing a few different war films at once: the desaturated grittiness of Saving Private Ryan, a tense Nazi confrontation that brings Inglourious Basterds to mind, and the “oners” of 1917. It never reaches those films, but those influences are clearly in the DNA.
The sound design also deserves credit. Distant gunfire, approaching vehicles, footsteps, breathing, and the mechanical weight of the radio all add to the tension. There’s also enough attention to period detail that WWII enthusiasts will find things to appreciate. The uniforms, weapons, gear, and overall military texture feel like they were taken seriously, even when the drama doesn’t fully land.
That’s really the frustrating thing about Lucky Strike. The setting is compelling, the cinematography is polished, the sound design is excellent, and Eastwood works better than expected when the movie becomes a stripped-down survival thriller. But the script keeps getting in the way, especially early on and whenever it tries to force emotional weight through painful dialogue.
Lucky Strike works best when no one is talking. When it trusts the image of a soldier alone in enemy territory, fighting through fear and exhaustion, there’s a decent movie here. When it tries to become a grand statement about war, sacrifice, and legacy, it starts sounding like every war movie cliché imaginable. It is not a disaster, but it’s a film that constantly reminds you of better movies while only occasionally becoming its own thing.
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