The California State Lottery meets The Purge. That’s Jackpot! In a nutshell, and there’s a doozy of a premise, huh? “How does this work?” one might ask, especially if that one is me. The answer is … simple? You see, a person wins the lottery midday, and then they are -quite literally- fair game FOR MURDER until sundown by anybody with a losing lottery ticket. The person who murders the winner immediately assumes the lottery winnings. That is all kinds of messed up.
Hmmm, how do I put this? As a movie idea, this is an A+: A fantastic way to create action and violence and comedy out of absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Anybody can win the lottery. Anyone can play the lottery. And, in a sense, there’s a small amount of justice – all lottery loses secretly hate the winner, so it makes sense that the winner is temporarily fair game for all the losers, right? Right.
OTOH …
In every other way, this idea is an F. A big fat “YOU FLUNKED.” You flunked morality; you flunked history; you flunked basic game play. And I’d be willing to bet you flunked human nature, too, but I don’t wish to live in a world where that theory gets tested. At its most basic root, Jackpot! is saying that legalese and police supervision are the only things that keep us from indulging in the worst of crimes. Really? And the ONLY motivation here is greed? Not even power or love or envy or revenge? Just greed. Good gravy, what an awful premise.
On top of that, this plot is buoyed atop a mountain of RW bullshit – the year is 2030 and a bankrupt California government institutes a death lottery to boost revenue. Huh, California is a bankrupt hellscape with crime so rampant that murder is now legal in some cases? Who wrote this? Fox News? I cannot begin to explore how far those points differ from reality. This isn’t 2124 or 2075 or even 2050. The film is set in 2030, which means the producers legitimately see this as a foreseeable future possibility. Yeah no. You know crime is actually higher in red states, right? And what makes you think “murder lottery” will attract more clientele? Doesn’t everyone dream of winning the lottery? Isn’t that why you play? What makes one believe that such a dream accompanying a death wish will attract more players? Is the desire to commit murder really that strong among us? No, it is not. Normal people don’t think about murder when the lottery gets announced. Norma people shouldn’t think about murder when a lottery winner is named. Who are you people?
OK, enough ranting, let’s get to the bones. Decades ago, Katie (Awkwafina) was a childhood actor; now, she’s returning to California to try it again as an adult. This is the California of nobody’s dreams, evidenced almost immediately by a desperate Katie opting for a living situation in which she wakes up to drips of raw sewage on her face, bedding, and clothing. Having nothing but dirty laundry, she has to rent a ridiculous gold outfit from her new slacker landlord just to have something for an audition. She is overcharged for the audition (?!) … and then it goes poorly. Very poorly.
Somewhere in there, she accidentally signs up for the lottery. Her day gets even worse when she wins the lottery (a $3.6 B Jackpot! Yes, billions. How bad can the state coffers be when the lottery is in the billions?). Katie doesn’t know she’s won the lottery, of course. All she knows is that everyone around her is suddenly a lethal enemy. (Oh, one little thing, while it is legal to kill a lottery winner, you cannot use a gun … and good freaking luck with that court case – all I see in this screenplay are court cases waiting to happen and jail cells rapidly filling.) Katie manages to make it downstairs from her audition before crashing into a dojo, where she is instantly recognized and attacked by everyone in a robe. Here, she’s helpe
d out by greed in that the dojo members all recognize that while they have the same goal, they’re all rivals.
And at this point, John Cena with hair drops in from the ceiling and starts kicking ass. Noel (Cena) is an independent contractor who is willing to provide Katie safety until sundown in return for 10% of her winnings. ($360M means you shouldn’t ever need another client, right?)
And this is what the film is about: Noel and Katie fleeing from every corner of El Lay while teams of bad guys attack them. Parts of this film are cute; Noel has a problem with killing. OK, weird trait for a professional bodyguard, but we’ll go with it. At one, he purposely helmets an armed car hijacking lowlife before kicking her out of the moving vehicle, because, well, she could get hurt. It is both comic and disturbing to see who is willing to get in on lottery murder, from an eighty-something Chinese collection of skin to the mom from “Freaks and Geeks.”
Even were I not disturbed by the premise of this film, I can’t say it’s a good one. Jackpot! strikes me a great deal like Awkwafina’s “fun” role from last year, Quiz Lady. Both films promised many smiles and delivered very few. What should have been a wild adventure a la It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, this film was, instead, a sad, cynical, and wholly inaccurate reflection on the Fox News version of the USA under Biden. I still love Awkwafina, both actress and personality, so I sure hope she continues to get vehicles that show off her skills, but this is another dog. I dunno how many more of these you get before you’re no longer a star.
There once was a woman named Kate
Who returned to her childhood state
Where she won the lottery
Marking her for slaughtery
And an intense increase in the death rate
Rated R, 106 Minutes
Director: Paul Feig
Writer: Rob Yescombe
Genre: Our screwed future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who secretly want to Purge
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anybody horrified by this dystopia
