Lucky Grandma review – Tsai Chin elevates an uneven oddball caper

The 85-year-old actor Tsai Chin is a gambling, chain-smoking revelation in Lucky Grandma, the debut film from writer/director Sasie Sealy. Her magnetic, fiery performance as an elderly Chinese-American woman whose greed lands her in some seriously hot water feels like a minor miracle in this current filmic climate. It's a shame, then, that Sealy's script doesn't quite deliver a story to match Chin's talent, offering up a fun but frequently tone-confused caper that doesn't seem to know if it's a jet-black comedy or a proper gangster film with an unlikely lead.

Things start out promisingly enough. Refusing to move in with her son in order to keep her independence, cash-strapped Grandma gets word from a fortune teller that she's in for a huge lucky streak. Before long, she's boarding a bus to a casino with the last of her cash and embarking on the sort of winning spree that suggests some actual magic is at play. Just as she strikes it rich, though, Grandma's streak comes to an abrupt end and she's left with nothing. This reversal is what later convinces her to steal a bag crammed with money from a dead man on the bus ride home. It's a decision that will come back to haunt her – and the film.

It's in these early scenes that Lucky Grandma is at its slickest and funniest, imbued with a deadpan wit and some inventive framing recalling the films of Wes Anderson. It's only later, as the story gets more convoluted, that Lucky Grandma trades its pitch-perfect first act for something less fortunate. Matters are complicated, see, when local gangster turn up to claim the missing cash. Grandma, fearing for her life, decides she needs to hire a bodyguard. She's lumped with the huge and kind-hearted “Big Pong” (Hsiao-Yuan Ha, also great) and suddenly the film shifts gears to become an odd couple yarn. As tensions rise and Grandma is pursed by even more gangsters, the tone shifts again, swapping out the buddy dynamic for a full-on crime plot straight out of the Coen brothers. When the bodies start racking up, a family member is kidnapped, and Grandma is caught in a shootout in a warehouse, you can’t help but wonder how it was we ever got to this point.

The film is prone to fits of stalling. Major characters disappear, never to be heard from again. Grandma – at times – proves to be a very unsympathetic lead. There's also a ludicrous chase scene in the back alleys of Chinatown in which three men somehow fail to catch up to an 85-year-old woman (even here, suspension of belief only goes so far). And yet despite these flaws, Lucky Grandma is also frequently charming, wonderful to look at, and packed with so many neat details and loving touches that it's worth taking a gamble on anyway. By the end we realise that true luck is simply having somebody there who cares about you. It’s just unfortunate that it takes so many dead gangsters for us to get there.

This film was screened as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2019.