Bullet Points: Jackpot!
In this fast paced world that we live in, movies can sneak up on you… I remember hearing about Jackpot! a while back and before I knew it, there it was available to stream on Prime Video!
- Lethal Lottery: During the Great Depression of 2026, the California Grand Lottery is formed as a way for the government and one lucky citizen to get stinking rich. There’s a big cash prize for the person with the winning ticket, as you would expect with a lottery. BUT… anyone who can kill the lottery winner before sundown on the day of the drawing, gets to claim that prize for themself. The biggest rule is that guns and bullets are not allowed… if you are going to kill the winner and claim the prize money you are going to have to work for it! The movie opens with a California Grand Lottery winner (played by Seann William Scott of Bulletproof Monk fame) on the run from a money hungry, blood thirsty mob, who chase him into a parking garage, which is followed by a brutal alley fight and then ironically he ends up dead in a grandmother’s living room! This opening establishes the rules of the California Grand Lottery and the fact that you can’t trust anyone!
- Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Fast forward to 2030. Former child star, Katie Kim (Awkwafina, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) is back in Los Angeles looking to resume her acting career, after spending the last several years taking care of her mother. She is also completely oblivious to the California Grand Lottery, but she is about to get a crash course in it, when she unwittingly enters the lottery and then wins the lottery… making her an instant target from her fellow aspiring actresses, a dojo filled with martial arts students and some fitness enthusiasts. And that’s about the time Noel (John Cena, 12 Rounds) enters her life, offering her a deal… he keeps her alive until sundown and in return he gets 10% of her winnings (which happens to be the biggest prize in California Grand Lottery history). Noel immediately starts living up to his end of the bargain… as they fend off a biker gang, Katie’s Air BNB hosts and a bus full of tourists!
- Panic Room: Things take a turn when Katie and Noel end up in Machine Gun Kelly’s panic room… a sentence you probably didn’t expect to read today. It is at that point that freelancing Noel has to call in the big guns, the Lewis Protection Agency headed up by a man that Noel has some not so pleasant history with, Louis Lewis (Simu Liu). At first calling in the super slick LPA seemed like it was the right call, but with $3.6 billion dollars on the line, we are reminded of what we learned at the start of the movie. Don’t Trust Anyone!
Earlier this summer while watching Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, I couldn’t help but wonder why it wasn’t released in theaters. While I was watching Jackpot!, I couldn’t help but think, this is EXACTLY the type of movie that was made for streaming. Jackpot! is fast paced stupid fun and it really doesn’t aspire to be anything more. John Cena and Awkwafina had good on screen chemistry. Cena was the selling point for me and the ultra good guy persona that Cena perfected in his years inside the squared circle really had a chance to shine.
Now it’s the Bonus Bullet Points’ time to shine…
- Soundtraxx: Jackpot! hit the jackpot in the music department… “California Girls” by The Beach Boys, “Beverly Hills” by Weezer and “Ch-Check It Out” by The Beastie Boys are among the many songs featured in the film. But the biggest soundtrack surprise had to be “Turtle Power” by Partners in Kryme.
- Directed By: Jackpot! was directed by Paul Feig.
- Outtakes: The end credits are jam packed with a ton of outtakes from the movie. I am talking Cannonball Run levels.
