Genre: Drama/Biography
Director: Bennett Miller
Writer: Chad Taylor
Cast: Wyatt Russell, Elizabeth Banks, Jenny Slate, Mackenzie Davis, John Krasinski, Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Michael Murphy
Plot: In 1994, Michael Larson (Wyatt Russell) sits down with Joan Lunden (Elizabeth Banks) on the set of Good Morning America. The film starts immediately after their on-air interview has ended. Joan asks how Michael is doing now and what he did with all his money.
In 1984, Michael is a 30-year-old air conditioner mechanic with a steady girlfriend Pamela (Mackenzie Davis) in a small Rust Belt Ohio town. He reveals through narration that he had always been a schemer throughout his young adulthood but this was his life at its calmest. The calm before the storm. However, due to corporate downsizing, he is laid off from his job and must settle for low wages as an ice cream truck driver. Depressed and struggling to make ends meet, Michael becomes addicted to the game show Press Your Luck. If the contestants correctly answer trivia questions, they get to essentially play roulette on a game board of rapidly-changing spaces that include vacations, large sums of money and the dreaded “Whammy” (resulting in the player losing the money they’ve earned).
Michael’s obsession goes into overdrive – using his VCR to record every episode and then spending 10+ hours a day analyzing every frame. Pamela grows irritated by this, packs her bags and leaves him. Michael’s obsessive pursuit pays off when he realizes that the game board is not random at all – instead just a rotation of five different layouts. He figures out that he can use this knowledge to predict what the game board will look like at any moment and, thus, avoid Whammies and maximize his money.
Back in 1994, Joan asks him how an ice cream truck driver from the Midwest wound up in Hollywood and on the show. Michael smiles.
Michael saves his money up to drive to California and attend the Press Your Luck open auditions. When he arrives in California, he is a fish out of water. When he describes his occupation to the show’s producer Nancy (Rose Byrne), it is almost too unbelievable for her to trust he is telling the truth. An ice cream truck driver from Ohio who is unemployed when the weather is too cold outside. However, after she is convinced, his brimming confidence makes it hard for her turn down the opportunity to have him on the show – assuming his cockiness would be in for a rude awakening while cameras are rolling.
The next day, Michael shares small talk with his fellow contestants Cheryl (Jenny Slate) and Ed (Patrick Wilson) (the previous episode's winner). Host Peter Tomarken (John Krasinski) comes by and wishes them all luck (pun intended). On Michael’s first go at the board, he is sweating and nervous and gets a Whammy. However, after this point, his mind is cleared and he uses his memorization to good use. Having memorized which spots on the board give extra spins, his winnings start building up and he cannot be stopped – to the host’s bewilderment (and eventual anger). Nancy panics in the control room trying to figure out how he is doing it and is angrily visited by network executive Les Collins (Michael Murphy) when he hears news about this. Michael finishes the day with largest one-day winnings in game show history ($110,000) and a trip to the Bahamas to top it off. Ed and Cheryl are both confused by how he did it but congratulate him nonetheless.
After the show, Tomarken comes storming in the back room and berates the producers for making him look like a fool out there. They re-iterate that they all look like fools, but Tomarken points out that he is the one whose face was on national TV the entire time. They interrogate Michael afterwards, and upon discovering his methods, are pissed to realize he technically didn’t break any rules. They ensure him that he is not invited back for the next episode. While Collins panics about the money they lost today, Nancy gets hard at work foolproofing the game for future editions.
Michael starts spending his newfound money once returning to Ohio, but is careful with it to start. He pays off some of his debt and makes small investments here and there. Pamela tries to visit him but he rejects her request to re-enter his life. This prompts him to contact Cheryl from the show and invite her to go to the Bahamas with him. Their trip goes well, but again, Michael is out of his element a bit in a place so far from home. He invites her to visit him in Ohio and see the pleasures small-town America has to offer. She accepts his invitation, but reiterates that she is not interested in him romantically.
When he returns to the States, Michael gets excited when he hears a promotion on the radio that would give him the opportunity to build upon his wealth. The station is offering $30,000 if someone matches the serial number for a one dollar bill they have. He withdraws $50,000 in ones from various banks, and spends the next few days obsessively checking each individual bill – but none of them are matches. Cheryl comes from California to visit him. She enjoys Ohio but is disappointed when she discovers what Michael has done with his money and recommends he deposit back in the banks. She heads back to California.
After she leaves, he takes a small amount of the money with him to the strip club and spends extravagantly. Although he went there seeking joy, he leaves the club even sadder than when he came. When he returns home, he finds that his house has been broken into and all his cash has been stolen. Days later, he calls Nancy and pleads that the show do a winners’ tournament, but she turns down his request – still angry at being burned before.
Jump forward ten years and Michael is living his ho-hum life and working at Walmart. He gets contacted by ABC, who offer him an interview on Good Morning America to discuss game shows in light of the new Robert Redford film Quiz Show – about a game show scandal 30 years before Michael’s own.
Lunden thanks Michael for talking to her so frankly and he once again leaves the big city behind. Back in Ohio, it is revealed that Michael’s currently knees-deep in a fake lottery Ponzi scheme that he runs out of his home. Simultaneously, he meets with his doctor and is diagnosed with throat cancer. When he is tipped off that the government is on his tail, he leaves Ohio behind for anonymity in Florida. Lonelier now than ever before.
The film ends in 1999, with Lunden reporting on Larson’s death from cancer at age 49.
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