Review: 'Lucky Strike' tries to deliver World War II action on a budget, with a wooden Scott Eastwood in a solo survival march

The World War II drama “Lucky Strike” has neither the budget to create the epic sweep of a “Saving Private Ryan” or the acting talent to make its attempt at a one-against-all combat thriller worth the time.

The story is in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium in December 1944, just as the German army is launching its last-ditch effort to stop the approaching Allied forces — a massive and deadly six-week push that became known as The Battle of the Bulge. Director Rod Davis Lurie (“The Contender,” “The Last Castle”), co-writing with Mark Frydman, concentrates on a U.S. Army unit of engineers, six men tasked with planting explosives to block a road that the German Panzer divisions need to advance.

Leading the unit is Capt. John Castle (played by Scott Eastwood), an efficient and personable commander. We don’t see much of his charm, though, because his men are gunned down as they’re finishing the placement of their explosives. Castle succeeds in setting off the explosives, but then faces another dilemma: Getting back to base, wounded and alone.

He gets on the unit’s portable radio, but the men on the other end cannot help, because they’re pinned down by enemy fire, as well. The voice on the radio tells Castle to start walking to a rendezvous site 27 kilometers away — and to guard his radio battery, which he’s told will be his lifeline.

What follows in Lurie and Frydman’s telling are a series of encounters, with a Belgian farm family, various SS soldiers, what’s left of a Black U.S. Army unit that was ambushed early in the story, and an American (Taylor John Smith) who’s separated from his unit. 

Filmed in Bulgaria, the movie is short of recognizable cast members — besides Eastwood, the only major players are Colin Hanks as a colonel who gives Castle’s unit their orders, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (“King Richard”), who appears in the movie’s framing device and whose role in the story is only revealed at the end.

Lurie rests everything on the strong back and jutting chin of Eastwood — and while the actor has a face that resembles that of his famous father, Clint Eastwood, he doesn’t have the same charisma or gravitas. Between his wooden performance and the production’s limited resources in making wartime carnage look convincing, “Lucky Strike” becomes a damp squib of a movie, never delivering the nail-biting action it promises.

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‘Lucky Strike’

★★

Opens Friday, June 26, in theaters. Rated R for violence, some grisly images, and language. Running time: 103 minutes.