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Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780792180043
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0792180046
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 22, 2002
Running Time: 108 minutes
Sales Rank: 82018
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: April 19, 2002
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Peter Cattaneo's Lucky Break is a likable comedy that suffered by being compared with his earlier hit The Full Monty, but is attractive enough in its own right. Charming, incompetent bank robber Jimmy Hands (James Nesbitt), five years into a 12-year sentence, puts together an escape plan that exploits the desire of the stage-struck prison governor (Christopher Plummer) to see his musical about the life of Nelson performed. The plan gets ever more complicated as he finds himself wanting to wreck the career of a bullying prison officer, trying to outwit an unpleasant thug who wants to supplant his original accomplices, and weighing the idea of escape at all against his growing relationship with anger-management trainer Annabel (Olivia Williams).
This is an intelligent caper film with some underlying serious tones. Jimmy slowly comes to realize that crime involves mixing with some unpleasant people. The backstage musical stuff--with its wonderfully fatuous ex-Cambridge director and a score just the right side of dreadful--is hilarious, and the plot's convoluted central scam is efficient as it plays out. If there is an overall failure, it comes from the clash between the film's farcical elements and the bittersweet quality of its central relationship, as well as Timothy Spall's portrayal of the victimized Cliff. --Roz Kaveney
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Entertaining
Small-time crook Jimmy Hands fears his luck may have run out. After a botched bank robbery, Jimmy finds himself in prison. But his fortune turns when the warden asks Jimmy to recruit prisoners to act in a musical he's written and plans to stage. Realizing this offers the possibility of a perfect escape route, Jimmy and his cast run the risk of being caught in both the stage's spotlights and the prison's searchlights. It is worth borrowing from your library as I did. It was fun to watch.
Rating:  - Surprisingly awful
After passing on The Full Monty in favour of Brassed Off, the now all-but defunct Film Four were quick to throw money at Peter Cattaneo's next comedy and confidently launched a huge marketing campaign for Lucky Break secure in the knowledge that they had the big local hit of the year. Subsequent excuses for the film's disastrous performance at the box-office varied from good weather putting people off going to the cinema to the revelation that the screenwriter had done time for IRA offences (subsequently ... Read More
Rating:  - Under-rated entertainment.
We never heard of this movie, but the cover looked interesting at the video rental store. We were not disappointed. It was funny and entertaining throughout. Being big fans of community theatre, it reminded us of "Waiting for Guffman," another movie we can recommend that didn't get enough attention.
Rating: - Lots to like
I watched this because I watch anything Timothy Spall does. He has a smaller part, but is brilliant, again. Yet everyone else does a fine job a well. Frank harper demonstrates he can play the gamut, as a vicious thug whose look stops clocks. Olivia Williams gradually and reluctantly falls in love, and does so beleivably and tenderly.
There are no caricatures in here, none of the cartoons that people American prison stories. Losers, bad people, and crooks are in prison, and most belong there. But ... Read More
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