Harry Dean Stanton bids us adieu with a smile

I still remember Desmond Llewelyn’s timely exit from the James Bond franchise. The Welsh actor played quartermaster Q in 17 films, and in 1999’s The World Is Not Enough introduced his successor (John Cleese) before giving Bond two pieces of advice. “Never let them see you bleed. Always have an escape plan.” With a grin, he then slowly disappeared on a descending lift. Llewelyn died in a car crash not long after the movie came out.

The world lost actor Harry Dean Stanton in September, but Lucky, his final starring film role, provides a fitting coda both to his 60-year screen career and to his life. Lucky, like Stanton, is a 90-year-old Second World War veteran and a committed atheist. I don’t know if the actor, like the character, had a panic attack/nothingness epiphany at age 13, but it sounds too real not to be true. (Besides, I remember having one myself.)

Lucky doesn’t find latelife love in this picture. He doesn’t even agree to take home an animal from the local pet shop; when the proprietor says he could offer a “forever home,” he replies that nothing lasts forever.

There isn’t much plot in this film from long-time actor, now first-time director John Carroll Lynch, which mostly plays out in the coffee shop and bar that seem to be the only going concerns in Lucky’s tiny Texas hometown. Howard (David Lynch) has lost his pet tortoise, President Roosevelt (he won’t say which president), giving rise to numerous chuckles at the thought of a turtle running away from home.

Ed Begley Jr. is Lucky’s doctor, advising him that since the cigarettes haven’t killed him yet he might as well keep smoking. Tom Skerritt, Stanton’s old shipmate in Alien, shows up as a fellow war vet with an interesting tale about Okinawa. And Barry Shebaka Henley reprises his kindly-bartender character from Paterson, this time pouring coffee instead of beer.

It’s a beautiful portrait of a kind of dogged stubbornness in the face of the inevitable. Lucky admits to one person that he’s pretty scared of what’s to come, and there are many more moments when we see it in his face, but the film’s final scene offers a subtle ray of hope. Stanton bids us farewell with a smile.∂∂∂∂

Lucky, Harry Dean Stanton’s final starring film role, provides a fitting end both to his 60-year screen career and to his life, Chris Knight writes. MAGNOLIA PICTURES VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS