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The first thing LUCKY STRIKE does is take away your safe distance. You\u2019re not watching the Battle of the Bulge from a hill or a war room. You\u2019re in the steel gut of a tank, in the cramped corners of a Belgian farmhouse, face-down in a field of dead bodies\u2014wherever Castle (Scott Eastwood) is, you are.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not stylistic flair; it\u2019s the film\u2019s core commandment.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything in the film, except for the opening, is subjectively told from his point of view,\u201d writer-director ROD DAVIS LURIE says. \u201cIt\u2019s very much in Scott\u2019s first person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across two conversations, Lurie returns again and again to that mantra: first-person POV as the engine for image, sound, editing, and story. It\u2019s also fused with something deeply personal\u2014his grief for his late son Hunter and a promise born from that loss to make films that carry meaning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI continue to feel obligated to capture the truth as much as possible,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m trying on every film right now to do something new. I just love this business so much that I want to do everything I can in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
LUCKY STRIKE becomes where those impulses converge: first-person immersion, personal loss, historical memory, and the restless curiosity of a filmmaker still looking for ways to challenge himself, all delivered through lensing, sound, design, and a defiantly old-fashioned movie hero.<\/p>\n
The Rule of First Person<\/strong><\/p>\n Lurie lights up when I use the phrase \u201cfirst person\u201d about the film.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re using a term there that I used all the time that no other critic has picked up on, which is first person,\u201d he says, delighted, in our first conversation.\u00a0 \u201cThat was [editor] Christal\u2019s mission as well\u2026 we violated that a couple of times, but we tried that everything in the film, except for the opening, is subjectively told from his point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n The rule is simple and ruthless. Camera placement, cutting, sound, subtitles, even what the audience is allowed to know\u2014everything is filtered through Castle.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why there are no subtitles for the Belgian family or the Germans.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cBecause if he doesn\u2019t understand it, why should we, right?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s pure first-person logic.\u00a0 If Castle can\u2019t parse the language, neither can we. When he\u2019s disoriented, we\u2019re disoriented. When he can\u2019t see beyond the fog in front of him, all we get is fog.<\/p>\n Editor Christal Khabib, whose first job for Lurie was on \u201cCommander in Chief<\/em>,\u201d locked into the philosophy immediately.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s a genius editor,\u201d he says. \u201cShe understood the mission right away\u2026 she\u2019s a super intellectual woman, and it was just a delight to be in the editing room with her.\u201d<\/p>\n Building a War from the Inside Out<\/strong><\/p>\n If the philosophy is first person, the execution is tactile. LUCKY STRIKE is built from the inside out\u2014tanks, tents, farmhouses, outposts\u2014rather than relying on digital shortcuts.<\/p>\n Even the claustrophobic tank interior that opens the film had to be physically created.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a working tank, but not one that we could shoot out of,\u201d Lurie explains. \u201cIn the working tanks, they\u2019re so small on the inside that it\u2019s almost impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n So the production built the tank interior and mounted it on a gimbal, allowing the camera and actors to be violently tossed with the machine while still preserving the intimate perspective of the men trapped inside it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe not only had to create a gimbal, we had to build the inside of that tank,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was not easy to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of that physical world falls to production designer Erik Carlson.<\/p>\n \u201cI like that you\u2019re giving credit to Erik Carlson. He did a beautiful job,\u201d Lurie says. \u201cThere are several interiors in the film during the battle: one is the tent in the beginning, then you\u2019ve got the home where the French family is\u2014or Belgian family is\u2014and then you\u2019ve got the place where the Nazis are hiding out, and he built all those\u2026 he built the entire building.\u201d<\/p>\n Lurie is as admiring of Carlson\u2019s resourcefulness as of his artistry.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere this guy is like a genius is getting it exactly right\u2014period perfect\u2014but doing it at an incredible budget,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s something to behold. I owe him a great deal.\u201d<\/p>\n Carlson was hardly the only veteran of Lurie\u2019s previous war film to return.<\/p>\n Working once again out of Nu Boyana Studios in Sofia, \u201cI brought over, I would say, 80% of \u2018The Outpost<\/em>\u2019 team on this film, because why wouldn\u2019t I?\u201d he says. \u201cThey did such a great job, and certainly, if I shoot in Eastern Europe, all those guys will be coming back if they\u2019ll come back.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bulgarian crews Lurie came to love while making \u201cThe Outpost<\/em>\u201d delivered again, this time in forests and mountains perfectly suited to the Battle of the Bulge but logistically brutal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult because getting equipment in and out, not to mention a fucking tank, is extremely difficult,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd terrain aside, it was unbelievably cold. It was really brutally cold.\u201d<\/p>\n That cold became another test of character, particularly for Eastwood.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s where Scott was a real champ, because, unlike almost every other actor I know, he never went into his trailer even once,\u201d Lurie recalls. \u201cHe stayed out with me and the crew in the cold. It was really something.\u201d<\/p>\n Grief in the Trenches<\/strong><\/p>\n Under the craft talk is something that never quite leaves Lurie\u2019s voice: grief.<\/p>\n During prep on \u201cThe Outpost<\/em>,\u201d his son Hunter died in front of him. The loss reoriented Lurie\u2019s sense of purpose.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Hunter died, when I was in prep on \u2018The Outpost<\/em>,\u2019 he died literally in front of my eyes,\u201d Lurie tells me. \u201cHis life was going away from him, second by second, and I promised him that I would only do things that I thought had some level of meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n Hunter, he says, has subsequently \u201cbeen a part of every one of my films.\u201d<\/p>\n LUCKY STRIKE is no exception.<\/p>\n There is even a fleeting moment during Castle\u2019s final firefight when he cries out Hunter\u2019s name before Lurie cuts to Castle\u2019s wife and young son\u2014a boy who, for the director, bore a startling resemblance to Hunter at that age.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody was wondering why I was sort of quietly losing it while we shot that sequence,\u201d Lurie recalls. \u201cI didn\u2019t share with anybody, but it literally looked like Hunter. Very deep. It was very, very deep to me.\u201d<\/p>\n The emotional spikes in LUCKY STRIKE aren\u2019t found only in explosions and gunfire. They\u2019re embedded in smaller, haunted moments that brush against death and memory.<\/p>\n Lurie is especially proud of the sequence where Castle lies face-down among the dead, one of the film\u2019s most chilling and strangely intimate stretches.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very proud of it,\u201d he says simply. \u201cIt\u2019s a really good scene.\u201d<\/p>\n He cites Edward Berger\u2019s \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>\u201d as an influence on the sequence, but what stays with him most is not the staging. It\u2019s the human detail.<\/p>\n \u201cThe actor playing the guy who wakes up, he just did a great job,\u201d Lurie says, before offering an anecdote he hadn\u2019t told anyone else.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we\u2019re filming this guy, his eyes kept fluttering,\u201d he remembers. \u201cI needed to have them closed, and he couldn\u2019t do it. So I asked him if he had a child. He goes, \u2018I have a daughter. She\u2019s one year old.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Lurie remembers the little girl\u2019s name as Ava.<\/p>\n \u201cAs his eyes were closed, I said to him, \u2018Please just envision in your mind right now Ava. Just imagine, think of Ava, Ava,\u2019 and his eyes start fluttering. It was just really beautiful. He loved his child so much.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a small moment on set, but it lives in the finished film as that strange, suspended intimacy between life and death\u2014a space Lurie knows all too well.<\/p>\n Sound as What Castle Hears<\/strong><\/p>\n Visually, the camera stays with Castle. Aurally, the same rule applies.<\/p>\n Lurie describes the sound design in the clearest possible terms:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat he hears is what we hear.\u201d<\/p>\n The sounds of tanks beyond the farmhouse, the heightened noises of combat, the things that would become exaggerated inside Castle\u2019s head\u2014all feed the same subjective experience.<\/p>\n That principle also extends into the score, where Lurie pushed himself into unfamiliar creative territory by sharing composing credit with longtime composer Larry Groupe.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m co-credited in composing the score of this movie, and I\u2019ve never done that before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Lurie supplied the central melody while Groupe developed the larger tonal architecture.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, I came up with a melody, and he did everything else,\u201d Lurie says. \u201cI wanted to have a minimalistic score, a very identifiable melody.\u201d<\/p>\n The repetitive musical language was conceived almost as something lodged inside Castle himself\u2014sounds \u201cringing in Castle\u2019s ears all the time,\u201d pulling us deeper into his nervous system rather than sitting decoratively atop the action.<\/p>\n Even the compromises reveal how seriously Lurie takes tone.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, we got priced out of being able to use \u2018I\u2019ll Be Home for Christmas<\/em>\u2019 over the opening,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had to take it out, so we just scored there.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0He laughs ruefully.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI mean, that was my idea. We never could afford it. I put it in, tried to convince the guys to spend the money on it, but guess what? There was just no money by the time we got there.\u201d<\/p>\n The song survives elsewhere in the film, but not in the place Lurie had imagined as its most poignant use.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt was just a perfect way for me to begin the movie, but Larry\u2019s score is really beautiful there, and it works really well.\u201d<\/p>\n Lurie himself also wrote the end-title song, \u201cShow Mercy to the Hero<\/em>,\u201d another expression of what he sees beneath Castle\u2019s survival.<\/p>\n \u201cSurvival isn\u2019t what it\u2019s cracked up to be,\u201d he says, echoing Castle\u2019s own realization. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to be a hero, you can only be a hero in the midst of tragedy, and that means that you have to exist within the tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n Visual Grammar: Newsreel, Memory, and Fog<\/strong><\/p>\n LUCKY STRIKE\u2019s visual grammar operates in three distinct modes: the monochrome objectivity of the opening, the rich color of homefront America, and the desaturated battlefields that define Castle\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n Interestingly, the opening wasn\u2019t definitively committed to black-and-white until after production.<\/p>\n \u201cI always knew that we would,\u201d Lurie explains. \u201cI told Lorenzo [Senatore], prepare for that, but we, of course, never told the studio that we\u2019re going to do anything in black and white, because if we had, they would have freaked.\u201d<\/p>\n Once the footage was finished, he presented the concept.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhen they saw it, I think that they really dug it.\u201d<\/p>\n For the primary battlefield look, Lurie and cinematographer Lorenzo Sentore drew from a distinctly European visual lineage.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the case of the primary look of the film, which is\u2026 the Battle of the Bulge sequences, I was very influenced by a movie called \u2018Army of Shadows<\/em>\u2019 by Jean-Pierre Melville,\u201d Lurie says, citing cinematographer Pierre Lhomme and noting the influence he believes that film subsequently had on Janusz Kaminski\u2019s work in \u201cSaving Private Ryan<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so you know, I steal more than I create,\u201d Lurie laughs. \u201cIt\u2019s just easier to look at the genius of others.\u201d<\/p>\n But inspiration still had to serve first person.<\/p>\n The opening exists without Castle and is therefore deliberately objective, presented in the visual language through which generations have known archival footage of the Battle of the Bulge: black-and-white.<\/p>\n \u201cThe beginning of the movie, there\u2019s no Castle,\u201d Lurie explains. \u201cThat entire scene is meant to be very objective and not from anyone\u2019s point of view, really.\u201d<\/p>\n Then Castle enters.<\/p>\n \u201cThe minute that we get into Castle\u2019s eyes, we switch to color, because color is what we see in.\u201d<\/p>\n Returning to black-and-white after that point would violate the central rule.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, black-and-white with his section would be a violation of the first person.\u201d<\/p>\n The world may drain of saturation. It may shake, blur, and disappear into mist. But once Castle owns the film, the camera does not retreat into the distancing aesthetic of newsreel.<\/p>\n One of LUCKY STRIKE\u2019s most potent visual tools is fog.\u00a0\u00a0And none of it was created in post.<\/p>\n \u201cNot one drop is in post,\u201d Lurie insists. \u201cThe fog was either already there or we used a fog machine.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision was less about atmosphere than perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it would be very interesting that you see nothing but fog ahead of you, and then you see muzzle flashes from the fog.\u201d<\/p>\n During the opening tank attack, those flashes become the final image of a man\u2019s life.<\/p>\n \u201cThey surprise you, not just because that guy was surprised by a surprise sound, but by a surprise visual,\u201d Lurie says. \u201cThese muzzle flashes that are all of a sudden in front of him. The last thing he ever saw in life were these muzzle flashes.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a perfect intersection of theme and technique: death as an abstract concept reduced, in a soldier\u2019s final instant, to a handful of white-hot bursts in the fog.<\/p>\n Faces of War, Moral Clarity, and the White Horse<\/strong><\/p>\n The first-person approach also informs how Lurie presents the enemy.<\/p>\n The American soldiers have the faces of ordinary men\u2014\u201cevery man Joes,\u201d as I described them to him\u2014while the SS possess a deliberately harder, more immediately identifiable physicality.<\/p>\n \u201cThe SS were often picked performatively,\u201d Lurie explains. \u201cThey had a certain look, they certainly had a certain haircut, and many of them had scars on their face that were put on there on purpose, as a matter of historical truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Casting them, he says, was hardly difficult.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cYou know an SS face when you see one. Let\u2019s put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n That visual clarity dovetails with a tonal clarity Lurie rarely permits himself.<\/p>\n Films such as \u201cThe Last Castle<\/em>\u201d and \u201cThe Outpost<\/em>\u201d wrestle with leadership, power, morality, and ambiguity. LUCKY STRIKE deliberately occupies different territory.<\/p>\n \u201cWorld War Two is the only war you can do [a big piece of entertainment] with,\u201d Lurie says. \u201c\u2018The Outpost<\/em>\u2019 is not a movie people should eat popcorn with, you know, but they do with this, and there\u2019s a very simple reason, which is that the good guys and bad guys are completely unambiguous.\u201d<\/p>\n His formulation is characteristically blunt.<\/p>\n \u201cKill a Nazi, no problem. There\u2019s no nuance, there\u2019s no regret\u2026 especially if it\u2019s the SS.\u201d<\/p>\n He points to \u201cRaiders of the Lost Ark<\/em>,\u201d where Nazis can be shot, incinerated, and even melted within the grammar of a mass-audience adventure film because the audience is never asked to question where evil resides.<\/p>\n That clarity gave Lurie permission to embrace a tradition of muscular WWII entertainment he had never before explored.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can have these super entertaining films like \u2018The Guns of Navarone<\/em>\u2019 or \u2018Von Ryan\u2019s Express<\/em>,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cThis is sort of where I took my cue from, in terms of the tone of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n And at its center,\u00a0\u201c[Castle]’s an old-fashioned movie hero, and I just love that. I\u2019ve never done a movie like that before, and I loved doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n Threaded through that muscular filmmaking, however, is one of LUCKY STRIKE\u2019s quietest and most mythic images – a white horse appearing at key moments in Castle\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n Initially, the horse was intended for a single appearance overlooking a ridge.\u00a0\u00a0Then the weather changed.<\/p>\n \u201cOn that same day it just started snowing, and I rushed to get Scott back onto set, and I rushed to get the horse there,\u201d Lurie recalls.<\/p>\n Knowing a larger snowstorm would eventually alter the landscape and create a continuity issue, Lurie seized the moment.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018I want you to put your hand out as if it\u2019s just beginning to snow.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And since the horse was there, \u201cLet\u2019s put the horse here, so it\u2019s like this rare moment of beauty within all this existential turmoil.\u201d<\/p>\n The result feels almost like grace.<\/p>\n But the symbolism carries a darker shadow.<\/p>\n \u201cThe horse is more meant to represent the pale horse from the Book of Revelation,\u201d Lurie says, paraphrasing from memory the biblical image of Death riding the pale horse and pointing as well to the influence of \u201cCome and See<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Beauty and death occupying the same frame.<\/p>\n Again.<\/p>\n The Rule-Breaker and the Lifelong Student<\/strong><\/p>\n For all his strictures about first person, Lurie is honest about occasionally breaking his own rule\u2014in farmhouse moments, a shaving scene, a handful of shots where he temporarily steps outside Castle\u2019s literal eyeline.<\/p>\n But even then, he tries to preserve either Castle\u2019s visual or auditory frame of mind.<\/p>\n What emerges is a paradoxical war film, rigorously subjective and deeply personal, yet unapologetically entertaining and morally clear. It\u2019s a story of tanks and fog and Nazis, yes, but also of survival and its cost, of a father carrying his son with him, and of a filmmaker who remains almost obsessively concerned with historical truth.<\/p>\n So obsessively, in fact, that one tank continues to irritate him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tank you see is what you call a Panzer III tank, and there were very few Panzer III tanks in the Battle of the Bulge, and mostly Panzer IVs,\u201d he says. \u201cNow this is stuff that only the most seasoned veteran could get, but it drives me crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n That may say as much about Lurie as anything.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m pretty seasoned at this now, and there\u2019s very little that can be thrown at me that I hadn\u2019t experienced before,\u201d he says. \u201cBut what I am trying to do on every film right now, though, Debbie, is to do something new.\u201d<\/p>\n On LUCKY STRIKE, that meant helping compose the score.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cOn the next one I\u2019m going to edit it,\u201d he says. \u201cI just love this business so much that I want to do everything I can in it.\u201d<\/p>\n Then comes the inevitable Rod Lurie qualifier.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever be a good costume designer, but everything else I\u2019m completely game.\u201d<\/p>\n As he races off to yet another interview\u2014on a Sunday, no less\u2014he leaves me with one last burst of candor and warmth.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to do these interviews now because of my movies, so I have to do it on Sundays,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut Debbie, you are just so much fucking fun. I can\u2019t begin to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirty-plus years in, the feeling is mutual.<\/p>\n by debbie elias, exclusive interviews 06\/08\/2026 & 06\/14\/2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n LUCKY STRIKE is now available On Digital and On Demand with DVD release on September 15, 2026<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI continue to feel obligated to capture the truth as much as possible,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m trying on every film right now to do something new. I just love this business so much that I want to do everything I can in it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3626],"tags":[12489,1489,12582,220,12581,12487,12488,6045,2202,5170,1768],"class_list":["post-42789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview-exclusives","tag-battle-of-the-bulge","tag-exclusive-interview","tag-first-person-storytelling","tag-interview","tag-lorenzo-senatore","tag-lucky-strike","tag-rod-davis-lurie","tag-rod-lurie","tag-scott-eastwood","tag-world-war-ii","tag-wwii"],"yoast_head":"\n