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too bad Milch didn't choose today's economy as his theme, unless this is all an allusion . . . The 'Tulips would have served well as the Shakespearean chorus . . . .
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 Luck Dramatic series. 9 p.m. Sun. on HBO. The word luck implies that the stars are capable of aligning in a certain way to nudge our lives in one direction or another. Luck can be good or bad. It can run in streaks and change in an instant. No matter that luck, if it does exist, is beyond anyone's control: Rabbit's feet are still rubbed hairless, the same lottery number combinations played week after week, and sidewalk cracks are purposely sidestepped by mere mortals hoping to improve their odds. When bad things happen, luck gets us off the responsibility hook; when good things happen, we are certain fortune has smiled on us. Luck is perhaps the purest distillation of human delusional folly. The humor and pathos of that folly are explored in sometimes exhaustive detail in the new HBO series "Luck," created by David Milch and executive-produced by Michael Mann. "Deadwood" fans already know that Milch doesn't make it easy for viewers to get a purchase on his series, but for those willing to do the work, "Luck," premiering Sunday, pays off. An ace at play Dustin Hoffman stars as Ace Bernstein, a smooth operator who's just been released after a three-year prison term. Although hardly a choirboy, this time around he took the fall for a crime to protect his grandson from being arrested. At the start of the series, as he is picked up at the prison gates by his driver and bodyguard, Gus "the Greek" (Dennis Farina), Ace is ready to get back in the game with a plan to add casino gambling to Santa Anita racetrack, using Gus as his front, since he has to be careful about violating the terms of his parole. Ace's is only one of the stories interwoven through the nine episodes of "Luck." There's also Walter Smith (Nick Nolte), who owns his own horse now but is haunted by events of his past when he was working for a wealthy horse owner in Kentucky. Rival trainer Turo Escalante (John Ortiz) is not to be trusted, even by his girlfriend, the track veterinarian Jo (Jill Hennessy). Then there are the jockeys themselves, a handsome young neophyte named Leon (Tom Payne) known as "Bug," his Irish girlfriend, Rosie (Kerry Condon), and the veteran Ronnie Jenkins (Gary Stevens), battling age and substance abuse to try to stay in the game. Finally, there is the stammering jockey agent, Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind), a kind of shed-row Mosca who tells every trainer, owner and jockey exactly what he thinks they want to hear, desperate to come out a winner in his own dead-end life. Love the language Writers often speak of the Shakespearean language in "Deadwood," and the Bard makes an implicit appearance in "Luck" as well - not through the dialogue, which owes much more to a 20th century bard, Damon Runyon - but through a quartet of railbirds who have spent most of their lives down on their luck, only to stumble into a period of good fortune. In Shakespeare, Marcus (Kevin Dunn), Renzo (Ritchie Coster), Jerry (Jason Gedrick) and Lonnie (Ian Hart) would play secondary roles - Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and their paddock pals, orbiting just outside the central action. Compared with the track "royalty" - Ace, Walter Smith, Escalante - they provide a bit of seriocomic relief, as well as vital commentary and counterpoint. Among the challenges of "Luck" is that Milch steadfastly avoids making major characters either distinctly likable or villainous. You can't really see Ace as a bad guy, any more than you feel unalloyed warmth toward the young female jockey or the lonely track veterinarian. The three exceptions are Michael Gambon, Alan Rosenberg and Walter Cox as a villainous trio, but theirs are supporting roles. There's a subtle and fascinating focus on bloodlines throughout the series - the equine variety, of course, but also the human. Walter Smith's primary character motivation is to atone for what happened in Kentucky to the sire of his current horse. The mix of guilt and responsibility he feels is not unlike what Ace feels toward his grandson back East. At the same time, Ace begins to exhibit paternal feelings toward a surrogate son, a young idealist named Nathan Israel (Patrick J. Adams), who becomes Ace's go-between with Gambon's character. It's not coincidental that, although Adams looks nothing like Hoffman, his hair is combed exactly like Ace's. Ace knows the kid is struggling with a moral compass of sorts, but you can't help believing he sees his younger self in Israel. "Luck" isn't flawless. Taking the chances it takes, it just couldn't be. In the opening scene, for example, as Ace gets into the backseat of the Mercedes driven by the Greek, he feels the need to explain the entire history of why he was in prison in the first place. Obviously, we don't know the story at that point, but it's a sure bet the Greek does. And while Milch succeeds in avoiding cliche so much of the way, he gives in at a couple of crucial moments toward the end of the series - once involving Hennessy's character, and again in the season finale. A cast to crow about The cast of the series has to be ... well, the luckiest bunch of actors in Hollywood, getting to speak Milch's consistently colorful dialogue. Many of the best performances are delivered by actors in secondary roles - Kind, for example, who is largely known for comedic roles, brings extraordinary depth to Joey Rathburn, a character so wrapped in pathos, self-delusion and self-loathing, he could have been plucked right out of Harry Hope's saloon. Dunn is terrific as the corpulent self-appointed leader of the railbird quartet, zipping around in his motorized wheelchair and sucking oxygen regularly through a plastic inhaler. The oxygen is an obvious metaphor for something else Marcus needs to keep living: the track. Gedrick, who's been under the radar for a few years, delivers a carefully nuanced performance as Jerry. You can see how his character must have gotten by for a while on charm and good looks. Now, more than a little worse for wear, he's addicted to gambling, the saddest of luck's victims. A minimalist role Hoffman's performance is a study in minimalism. With tightly pursed lips and squinting eyes, his face seems to fight against making the smallest change in expression. And then there's the walk - did you ever notice how Hoffman always walked like an older man, even in his "Graduate" days, and has finally grown into that walk now? Ace plays his cards and his personality close to the vest. It's an artfully "small" performance, contrasting beautifully with the noisier characters around him. At every turn, it seems, Milch intentionally avoids predictability. You'll see one character apparently set up to get knocked down in an almost too-familiar television cliche, only to come out on top. Another character is so down on his luck, you're sure he'll come out a winner at last. But he doesn't. In the end, perhaps luck is just a naively convenient way of ascribing order to a chaotic universe. Or maybe there's no such thing as luck. Maybe what really determines what happens to these characters is something more inescapable: their own actions. E-mail David Wiegand at dwiegand@sfchronicle.com. |