JACKPOT! - Mark Reviews Movies

Jackpot!, Amazon MGM Studios

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | August 15, 2024

Director Paul Feig's Jackpot! gets a good amount of mileage out of its early momentum and the chemistry of its mismatched leads. There's something to be said for an action-comedy that's dedicated to a non-stop approach to both its action and its comedy, which is why the movie's third act ultimately derails a fine effort.

Until then, though, the material goes full throttle with its two-tiered but simply ambitions. A prologue, featuring Seann William Scott as a momentary protagonist, establishes the basics of the premise. In the year 2030, the state of California has been running a diabolical form of lottery for four years, amidst a sharp rise in the wealth gap. It's like any other lottery, in that people buy tickets and the potential winnings keep rising as more drawings fail to have a winner, but there's a catch for anyone lucky enough to be chosen for the jackpot.

The money isn't immediately guaranteed. No, everyone else who purchased a losing ticket has until sundown on the day someone is selected to kill the winner. Anyone who successfully kills a lottery winner earns the money in the pot.

There is, of course, no logical foundation for this system, and if screenwriter Rob Yescombe had any satirical aims in mind beyond the fact that greed can make murderers of seemingly ordinary people, that might have been an issue here. Instead, the filmmakers know it's simply an odd and sinister gimmick for an extended chase, plenty of fights, and lots of jokes. In a way, the movie's unambitious nature works in its favor.

The real protagonist here is Katie (Awkwafina), a former child actor who has returned to Los Angeles to restart her career. She took some time off to care for her sick mother, and after the mother's death, Katie feels obligated to pursue the job that seemed to make her mom so proud of and happy with her.

L.A. turns out to be more of a nightmare than Katie could have expected, since she was too distracted with caretaking to realize what was going on there. People without homes are everywhere. Everyone, except for those who are already wealthy and keep getting richer, is desperate for some financial windfall. Katie finds herself in a room being rented by Shadi (Ayden Mayeri), also an aspiring actress, that's nothing like the photos in the online ad (Shadi argues no one would rent the space if the posting was accurate).

By way of having to wear Shadi's clothes for an audition because of a sewage problem, Katie ends up with the winning lottery ticket. As soon as she's announced as the winner, her photo appears on every losing ticket, sending actors, martial arts students, yoga participants, biker gangs, and everyone else to look for her and try to kill her.

There are some rules, of course, although the major one is that the jackpot-hunters can't use firearms. That's a good enough excuse for Feig to stage a string of no-holds-barred brawls, in which Katie initially survives by way of dumb luck and attempting to dodge more punches than she throws. Despite the deadly stakes of the setup, even the fights and chases have comedy baked into them, as Katie, whose only experience in fisticuffs is stage combat, flails about and unintentionally pulls one karate student into an unexpected splits.

It's funny, to be sure, but the material really comes to life with the entrance of a protector into the mix. He's Noel (John Cena), a freelance security agent who specifically caters to lottery winners. As unlikely as it might seem, this is apparently a sound business venture, and Noel is calm and collected as he explains his services to Katie, while taking down a string of assailants without much of an interruption in his sales pitch.

The rest of the plot amounts to assorted action sequences throughout the city, occasionally interrupted by some relatively quiet moments of Katie and Joel getting to know each other. Mostly, though, the two bicker and banter, as one would expect from any comedy about two unlikely allies facing a high-stress scenario, but the pairing here does a lot of the movie's heavy lifting.

Both of these actors are funny in general, and their dynamic in this material highlights and complements each one's particular brand of comedy. Awkafina gets the quick-witted barbs, while Cena plays the deadpan straight man, too polite to think of any retorts. There's something of a clever reversal of those roles whenever the action rises, if only because Cena becomes the competent focus, as Awkwafina's character is left to be completely flummoxed as to what to do.

It works, as does the movie's over-the-top, intentionally comedic action, as more and more lottery losers start pursuing Katie. Well, it does for a while, at least, until everything grinds to a halt with the introduction of Simu Liu's rival lottery security agent, a lull in the plotting to get at some back story and double-crossing, and the sidelining of the Cena-Awkwafina pairing for all of that to occur.

Jackpot! doesn't set out to do much, except to keep the gags and the action coming as rapidly as possible. It's easy to appreciate that simplicity and admire how the filmmakers maintain the energy of both of those conceits, but that also makes it disappointingly obvious how and why the last stretch misses the mark.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products