Takeaway Trust: how the series "Lucky" continued the story of on-screen scams
The first three episodes of the crime thriller "Lucky" have been released, in which Anya Taylor-Joy plays a professional con artist left without money and allies after a failed robbery. The heroine is being hunted by the FBI and a criminal gang at the same time, and the only person she can ask for advice from is her conman father, who is serving time in prison. How the series differs from the literary source, why deception is shown in it as a family legacy and how the screen fraudster went from a punished femme fatale to an independent antiheroine — in the material of Izvestia.
Lucky Armstrong's Latest case
The series centers on Luciana "Lucky" Armstrong, who grew up in a criminal environment. According to the official synopsis, she gave up her old life a few years ago, but now she has to turn to her criminal skills once again in order to free herself from the past.
Lucky is able to instantly assess the situation, win over strangers and come up with legends that meet the expectations of the interlocutor. The series shows this already in the first episode: after Carey's disappearance, she uses a fictional story about a troubled partner to find transportation and leave Las Vegas before the FBI arrives.
Lucky runs his last big case with Cary Masterson, played by Drew Starkey. After a multi-million dollar robbery, the couple stops in Las Vegas. In the morning, Lucky discovers that Cary has disappeared with the money, having previously drugged her. Almost immediately, the FBI arrives at the hotel, and the heroine has to flee before she can figure out if she was originally part of someone else's trap.
The persecution is conducted on two lines at once. FBI Agent Billy Rand, played by Onzhanyu Ellis-Taylor, is trying to restore the fugitive's route. At the same time, Lucky is looking for Priscilla Masterson, Carey's mother and the head of a criminal organization, played by Annette Bening. The money with which Carey disappeared belonged to another influential representative of the criminal world, so Priscilla needs to find her son and return the stolen goods.
As a result, the series confronts not a heroine and two men, as a classic noir would do, but three women with different attitudes to power. Lucky exists outside the law, but dreams of freedom. Billy represents the state, but she also has to recognize lies and anticipate the suspect's actions. Priscilla sets the rules for herself inside the criminal world, although it gradually becomes clear that even her power is limited.
Lucky's father John Armstrong, played by Timothy Olyphant, occupies a separate place. He is in prison, but continues to participate in his daughter's life, giving her advice over the phone. It was from him that Lucky learned to read the situation, adjust to the interlocutor and not trust anyone to the end.
What has the series changed in the novel?
Lucky is based on the novel of the same name by Canadian writer Marissa Stapley, published in 2021. The book was selected for the Reese Witherspoon Reader's Club and entered The New York Times bestseller list.
The main plot mechanism of the book was not included in the series. In the novel, Lucky receives a winning lottery ticket worth $390 million after a robbery. The ticket could provide her with a new life, but the heroine is unable to collect the winnings without revealing her identity and location. In the film adaptation, this line was completely removed, leaving only a small visual reference for readers.
According to Stapley, the story of a woman who is pursued by the FBI and mafia for seven episodes would have been overloaded if the authors had also kept the plot with the lottery ticket. The writer admitted that at first she was surprised by such a significant change, but agreed that book and television storytelling require different plot mechanisms.
Stapley did not approach this conflict from a position of justifying the perpetrator. When the writer was 10 years old, her mother lost her savings due to a couple who introduced themselves as investors. This incident did not become the direct basis of the novel, but influenced the author's attitude to the topic of fraud, trust and the possibility of redemption.
The series doesn't try to present Lucky's every scam as a form of just resistance. Some of her actions remain an exploitation of someone else's trust, even if the heroine herself is in danger. In total, Lucky has seven episodes lasting about 40-48 minutes. The first two episodes were released on July 15, and the third on July 22. New episodes will appear on Wednesdays, with the finale scheduled for August 19th.
The crime must be punished
Classic Hollywood drew a clear line between a heroine who was allowed to worry about and a dangerous woman whose influence needed to be stopped. One of the main figures of classic noir is Phyllis Dietrichson from Billy Wilder's "Double Insurance". In the 1944 film, she convinces insurance agent Walter Neff to help her kill her husband and get an insurance payout. The film is based on a novel by James Caine, and the screenplay was written by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler.
Phyllis does not just participate in the crime, but creates its design, finding a man who is ready to do the main job. At the same time, the viewer learns the story from Walter's confession. Even when a woman manages events, the man has the right to explain them. In his version, Phyllis becomes the embodiment of destructive desire.: It promises love, freedom, and money, but it brings death.
Such an ending was determined not only by the logic of the genre. The Hollywood production code forbade depicting crimes in such a way that the viewer sympathized with the violator of the law or wanted to imitate him. The Code also required that law and justice not be portrayed in a negative light.
Therefore, the criminal had to be punished, and the independent femme fatale could not get a completely happy ending. Phyllis is killed after she hesitates to shoot Walter a second time and admits that she had never really loved him before.
But even in the era of harsh studio self—censorship, there was a loophole - comedy. In Preston Sturges' "Lady Eve," Barbara Stanwyck plays Jean Harrington, the daughter of a card sharper and a con artist. Together with her father, she chooses the naive heir to the beer fortune, Charles Pike, as a target, but falls in love with him, and after being exposed, she returns disguised as a British aristocrat.
Jean also changes personalities and manipulates men, but the film does not turn her sexuality into unequivocal evidence of depravity. The comedic intonation allows the fraudster to keep her freedom and get a romantic ending. Her reincarnations also show the conventionality of social differences: proper manners, clothes and confidence are enough for the daughter of a hustler to be mistaken for a representative of high society.
When femme fatale took over the main plan
As censorship weakened, the cinema allowed the fraudster not only to invent a crime, but also to get away with the money. In John Dahl's "The Last Seduction," Linda Fiorentino's character Bridget Gregory steals $700,000 from her husband, proceeds from a drug deal, hides in a small town and involves a new lover in another criminal scheme.
The main difference between Bridget and Phyllis Dietrichson is not only in the degree of cruelty. History no longer needs male recognition to explain her actions. Bridget herself remains the center of the narrative, does not repent and does not become weaker after the appearance of a lover. For noir, this is a fundamental change: the femme fatale experiences the men she was supposed to destroy with herself.
In Lana and Lilly Wachowski's 1996 film The Connection, Violet and Corky decide to steal $2 million belonging to the mafia. Men perceive one as the dependent mistress of a gangster, and the other as an employee with a criminal past. This neglect becomes one of the factors allowing women to have their surgery.
In such paintings, femininity no longer necessarily means innate deceit, as in classic noir. She becomes a social mask, the value of which the heroine understands better than others. Men lose not because of mystical power, but because they refuse to perceive a woman as an equal opponent in advance.
Real scammers and inconvenient victims
A new round of interest in the topic arose after the TV series "Inventing Anna" and "Dropped Out", released in 2022. The first one tells about a journalist investigating the story of Anna Delvy, who convinced representatives of the New York elite that she was a rich German heiress. The second one is dedicated to Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried.
Anna Delvey is the name under which Anna Sorokina acted. She posed as the heiress of a large fortune, was part of a circle of wealthy New Yorkers and was trying to get funding for her own art club. In 2019, she was found guilty of several counts of embezzlement and theft of services.
Theranos promised to change the medical analysis market with the help of technology that allegedly allowed for numerous studies on small amounts of blood. The company attracted large investors, but its capabilities did not match public statements. "Dropped Out" shows the rise of Holmes, the development of Theranos, and the subsequent exposure.
Both Sorokina and Holmes exploited not only the gullibility of individuals, but also the codes of the environment they sought to enter. One reproduced the image of a European heiress, the other an unwavering technological visionary. Both offered others an attractive story about the future they wanted to belong to.
Putting real scams on the screen creates an ethical problem. The brighter the criminal, the easier it is to turn the people affected by her into obstacles in the path of the main character. After the release of Inventing Anna, Rachel Williams, who became one of Sorokina's victims, accused the project of romanticizing proven crimes, distorting her own story and blurring the line between fact and fiction.
Against this background, the fictional Lucky gives the authors more freedom: they can sympathize with her without rewriting the biography of a particular victim. However, the series still poses the viewer with the question of where the line lies between interest in a complex heroine and admiration for a person who uses someone else's trust.
Why do we keep rooting for the scammer
Stories about scammers initially offer the viewer an unspoken deal: the audience knows that they are watching a deception, but they want to understand how elegantly the trick will be performed. Sympathy largely depends on the chosen victim. Cheating a bank, mafia, or smug millionaire is usually perceived easier than exploiting an elderly person or a random stranger.
The cheating woman adds another layer to this construction. She often wins because others underestimate her ability to act independently. The viewer enjoys not only the scam, but also the destruction of someone else's confidence that the heroine should be weak, dependent, or predictable.
Taylor-Joy explained her interest in the role by the lack of morally ambiguous female characters against the background of many similar male characters. According to the actress, she was also interested in a man who must constantly move for the sake of survival, but at the same time he takes something away from others.
Lucky is really closer not to a classic seductress, but to the hero of a dynamic thriller. She runs, fights, improvises, and uses lies as a way of physical survival. At the same time, Taylor-Joy, who participated in the project as an executive producer, insisted that the heroine's external activity should feel loneliness and isolation.
Lucky doesn't always manage to combine a dynamic chase with a conversation about injury and responsibility. The Guardian noted the uneven tone of the series: according to the publication, the project simultaneously strives to remain a light criminal entertainment and to talk about the nature of the victim, betrayal and society's attitude towards women.
Nevertheless, the position of the heroine herself in the history of cinema looks quite definite. Phyllis Dietrichson had to die to restore the broken order. Jean Harrington was allowed to keep her freedom inside the comedy. Eddie Loggins defended age, and Bridget Gregory defended the destruction of previous genre and censorship restrictions.
Lucky no longer needs to prove his right to be at the center of the story. The main question now is not whether she will be punished for her freedom, but whether she will be able to dispose of this freedom without another lie. For the first time, the heroine will have to deceive not a man, the police or the mafia, but her own past.
On June 25, Medialogia presented the top 30 Russian series ratings for May of this year. He was led by the Boys project, which scored 2984 points. The second place was taken by the TV series Euphoria (1983 points), and the third place was taken by the Russian Sled (1617 points), which rose by five positions in just a month. The top five also included the anime "Magic Battle" (1378 points) and the TV series "Stranger Things" (1159 points).
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
