Lucky You

Like The Hustler, this absorbing Las Vegas story about a professional poker player (Eric Bana) uses gambling to tell a tale of moral regeneration. But Bana can’t carry a picture like Paul Newman, and poker proves less photogenic than pool, so one’s attention gets diverted to Drew Barrymore, playing Bana’s goody two-shoes love interest, a fledgling nightclub singer. As the hero’s father (and poker rival), Robert Duvall is good as usual, though I couldn’t quite buy him as a former English teachereven if he did name his son Huckleberry. Curtis Hanson (Wonder Boys) directed a script he cowrote with Eric Roth (Munich, Forrest Gump). PG-13, 124 min. (JR)

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