Rating: R
Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 03/22/2005
Sound: DDS2.0
Run Time: 101 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: Anchor Bay
A hybrid cross-pollination of a
Martin Scorsese and
Frank Capra film, this feel-good comic
fantasy is loosely based on the real-life story of a New York lottery winner.
Anthony LaPaglia stars as
Frank Pesce Jr., a New Yorker with a good-luck streak that is unmatched in his Little Italy neighborhood. When
Frank throws a pair of dice in a game of chance, he doesn't just toss a winning hand, the dice land on top of each other. When he's stabbed in the chest by a girlfriend's brother, his doctors find a pre-cancerous tumor. Although he tries again and again to get rid of a vehicle he no longer wants, it is retrieved every single time by the authorities. So when New York announces its first statewide lottery in 1976,
Frank buys one ticket and immediately becomes everybody's best friend. Unfortunately,
Frank's good luck is matched by the equally bad luck of his hard-working father,
Frank Sr. (
Danny Aiello), who has run up a gambling debt to a local mobster. The wise guy is willing to forgive the note if
Frank Jr. will just hand over his sure-to-be lucky ticket, leaving the city's luckiest Italian-American in a bit of a moral quandary. The real
Frank Pesce Jr. executive produces and co-stars in
29th Street as his own police officer brother,
Vito.
~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
