“Right then and there I knew what I wanted to be,” says Sean Patrick Flannery, who plays an over-zealous lawyer who finally gets his chance at the big-time in Just Your Luck.

“You wanted to be a lawyer,” nods Jon Polito as the owner of the New Sudka Cafe II. He has that look in his eye; he can easily remember when he first wanted to run his own diner.

“No,” Flannery responds. “I wanted to be a millionaire.”

Don’t we all?

When it comes to movies about how far a person will go to become a millionaire, video stores seem to offer an unending list of choices. Written and directed by Gary Auerbach, the straight-to-video Just Your Luck successfully puts an interesting new spin on the stale greed movie. Five completely different characters spending an evening together in an all-night diner find that they have one thing in common: they are all willing to lie, steal and kill for a winning $6 million lottery ticket. This is not the type of movie that should be confused with It Could Happen to You; it’s a comedy of sorts, but the humor is dark and pokes fun at desperate actions.

The characters aren’t exactly the type you might expect to find dragging bodies around town, stabbing one another or fighting with the police, but that’s what makes the story so interesting. They are ordinary people transformed by an extraordinary opportunity. Virginia Madsen plays Flannery’s bitchy counterpart, a fellow lawyer who won’t let anything get in her way. Polito is disappointingly overly-stereotyped as the Italian restaurant owner, whose primary joy in life is composing poetic “specials” for his customers. So far, the characters are interesting, but the actors move jerkily and fall out of character when delivering their lines. Alanna Ubach and Ernie Hudson shine through the muddled cast as an honest waitress trying to pay her way through college and a married black man with a heavy conscience who works in the laundromat down the street.

On the nights of the New York lottery drawing, a disheveled old man comes into the New Sudka Cafe II, sits quietly in a booth, and checks to see if his lucky numbers will win the jackpot. Tonight is what most people would call his ‘lucky night,’ with one small exception: discovering that he is holding the $6 million ticket, the old man has a heart attack and collapses to the floor. So what do the other characters in the diner do? They call 911, of course. But wait . . . Before anyone has time to pick up on the other end, the five characters decide that they should leave the man where he is and keep the lottery ticket for themselves.

Agreeing to split the money between the five main characters is no problem, but two more diner customers remain unaccounted for: a trashy bag lady (Carroll Baker) who would rather eat pumpkin pie than have a part in their plan and a gambler (Jon Favreau) who could use some dough to pay back an old debt. Emerging from a telephone booth in the corner of the cafe, the sleazy gambler pulls an automatic and demands a share of the winnings.

“No problem,” the female lawyer responds. She has put herself in charge of the situation, trying to remain cool in the face of everything that threatens the money. “There are six of us. That’s a million dollars apiece.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got a gun,” he snarls, pointing the muzzle of the gun in her face, “so I get more.”

As you might expect, this is the perfect opportunity for all hell to break loose (as it does several times in the movie). In the scuffle that ensues, the gun changes hands and the scruffy gambler ends up dead with a knife in his back. One of the movie’s main drawbacks is a complete indifference for dead bodies, an emerging trend in movies spawned from Quentin Tarantino’s films.

“My career is shot,” Flannery mourns. “Who’d hire a lawyer who’d stab you in the back?”

The five characters never could have guessed what a hassle disposing of two carcasses and successfully dividing the money among themselves could be. Nor would they have had any idea that two small-time gangsters (one of them is a green-haired Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers) might show up to collect a debt from a missing gambler. And how should they explain the dead old man slumped over one of the tables to the police?

What follows is a hilarious chain of events that is nothing short of ingenious. I’ll try not to spoil any more surprises since they are the key to making the movie what it is. If the story interests you so far, you’ll have to take my word that the script won’t let you down.

Auerbach has an unusual gift for creating interesting characters, but he drops them into a whirlpool plot with so many changes of direction that it is likely to leave you feeling a little woozy. Most good movies have a few strategically placed twists that jerk the audience in unexpected directions. The plot of Just Your Luck twists constantly, almost to the point of nauseam. All the story’s surprises are welcome, though they often seem contrived and a little too coincidental.

Though the story is catchy, you are likely to be a little turned off by the hip camera work. However, its surreal touch does show moments of utter brilliance (for instance, the lights mysterious dim in one scene, as Madsen and one of the gangsters spin while looking deep into one another’s eyes, suggesting that love might actually spring out of all the craziness). In general, the creative camera shots and the tricks that the director plays call too much attention to themselves. These moments make it seem as though Auerbach isn’t really taking this film seriously, using it instead to experiment with different ideas.

Just Your Luck is the kind of movie that people might expect to have put all the good scenes in the preview and saved nothing for the video. In truth, the entire film is laden with clever dialogue and action. Unfortunately, the movie is cursed with a lackluster cast and pop cinematography that tries too hard to be cool.

I’ve never understood why Hollywood insists on remaking some of the best films (Sabrina, The Vanishing). They should choose deserving movies like Just Your Luck that could have been much better than they turned out to be. With a few minor changes to the dialogue, a director more concerned with his story than his style, and an experienced cast, Just Your Luck could be the next cult favorite, rivaling movies like The Usual Suspects.