Jackpot - 2024

Action/comedy film that features a hero and heroine on the run through the mean streets of Los Angeles, pursued by zombies... wait, that's not right, pursued by greed-mad fellow Los Angelenos who are playing a lethal game called "Jackpot."

A "lottery-winner" (star Awkwafina) unexpectedly wins a gigantic money reward, and inflation being what it is that's $3.6 billion in this iteration, still a mighty sum in this future-setting of 2030, but there's a huge catch: you can only collect your winnings if you survive long enough to do so. At this future date in sunny California it is legal to murder the winner and receive the money instead, but you must obey the simple rules which seems to mean "no guns." Hurled objects, and especially knives, axes, etc., are quite alright, as are fists and strangling.

Jackpot is a comedy with a grotesquely brutal premise that only barely explores the pop culture genre of ultra-violence to which it clearly belongs (with a swerve through the obvious link to Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery) but Jackpot operates without any self-awareness of these things except for some mugging at the camera and a string of celebrity-centric jokes.

The stunt-work is impressive and abundant but the plot is threadbare and what story elements there are to justify the characters (as played by John Cena and Awkwafina) are sparingly dished out as the violent, though comedic, confrontations multiply in a bizarre Three Stooges sort of reality where inventive ways to perform bodily harm are practiced but the impact of the physicality is not typically represented in wounds or a body count. This is of course an easy face-saving way to avoid any meditation on death or even murder, since it is generally no more real in Jackpot than the death of a character is in a video game.

Each stereotype of society: moms, old people, police, workmen, and especially fame-seeking amateur actors, are lampooned as money-obsessed would-be murderers who go from "normal" to violent in a flash of werewolf-like speed. So, with this sort of catelog of "types" on hand, there's a lot of satire to be had, there's just precious little story to hang these paper dolls on. There are a few breathers along the way, but the tempo of the chase is what really propels the tale and though the cast is using every possible vulgarism in popular usage in order to salt and pepper the dialogue, only the stunt work is very clever and it seems at the end we're to understand murder is funny and money, as a goal that is pooh-poohed by the main two characters, is still the key to happiness and the underlying nihilism isn't intended but the story can't help itself but be drenched in it, well, that and all the killing.

What's Recent