5 sentence review of HBO's Luck

Pilot Episode

5. There was a lot to like about the pilot for executive producers Michael Mann and David Milch’s “Luck” but I am going to focus on the dramatic scene from the preview trailer where Dustin Hoffman dramatically knocks over the chair he is sitting in, points and then says “You’ve got qualms? Three years!”

4. Most of the pilot revolves around four railbirds (who generally coming off as later-day Rosencrantzs and Guildensterns) as they win a $2.8 million Pick Six which teaching the viewer some rudiments of horse racing.

3.  But that kind of slow plot line is not going to lend itself to a dramatic trailer that spurs interest, so the Hoffman scene comes about as a kind of experimental film making from Milch, who extracts a dramatic scene from a show that is not really about that.

2. Hoffman and a delightful Dennis Farina squabble over acquiring a tape recorder, we later see Hoffman heading out with said recorder (like Checkov’s gun) and then while meeting with former illicit associate and successful restauranteur DiRossi (well acted by Alan Rosenberg), openly reveals the tape recorder and explains he needs it as a memory device.

1.  We then see Hoffman’s dramatic “flipping out” scene even though DiRossi’s reaction to the tape recorder is bemused rather than accusatory, Hoffman afterwards apologizes and rights the chair he flipped over, DiRossi kindly says don’t worry about it we are friends here and the scene ends in a typical odd Milch fashion with Hoffman looking down at the shirt he ripped open to reveal no wire tap present and saying “I need to get some new shirts…I shrunk in prison.”

Jill Hennessy is a vet on HBO's "Luck." Unfortunately, she does not dress this way.