‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ review: Sam Rockwell rages against the machines in glib, gonzo AI satire

Dir: Gore Verbinski. US/Germany. 2025. 134mins

Befitting its snarky, slightly ominous title, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is an audacious, irreverent action-satire in which the world is close to being destroyed by AI — unless a smart-aleck stranger from the future can do something about it by returning to our time. Sam Rockwell stars as a solitary hero who recruits a handful of ordinary men and women to accompany him on his harrowing quest, none of them entirely sure he’s sane. Gore Verbinski’s first feature in nearly a decade taps into contemporary anxieties about how technology robs us of our humanity, but the execution proves too glib and too proud of its own nihilistic spirit.

 Doesn’t have enough of a human element

After debuting as a secret screening at Fantastic Fest, the picture plays as a Berlin Special Screening before opening in the US on February 13. Rockwell is joined by a buzzy cast that includes Haley Lu Richards, Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz and Juno Temple, which should attract viewers seeking a gonzo spectacle. But despite being directed by Verbinski, who orchestrated such hits as the US remake of The Ring, Rango and the first three Pirates Of The Caribbean films, Good Luck may emerge as a cult classic rather than as a major box-office performer.

It’s late one night at a Los Angeles diner when an unidentified man (Rockwell) bursts through the door with a bomb srapped to his chest, and announces that he’s from the future. Raving angrily about how AI, smartphones and social media have systematically made humans stupid, he claims that he has visited this diner at this exact moment 117 times before – hoping he will eventually finally find the right combination of patrons who can go with him on a journey to stop a mysterious young boy who is about to launch a devastating new AI program. Among the people who agree to go along with him are Mark (Pena) and Janet (Beetz), a couple at an impasse, and Ingrid (Richardson), who is wearing a princess costume for unknown reasons.

Matthew Robinson’s screenplay first draws our attention to the unnamed man and his insistence on society’s imminent doom, but eventually Good Luck will periodically pause the action for compact summaries of how the man’s cohorts ended up at that diner. One flashback involves Mark substitute-teaching at a high school, discovering to his horror that his students seem brainwashed by their phones — so much so that they start acting in a zombie-ish hive mind manner. Another interlude explains Ingrid’s princess outfit, an anecdote connected to her being allergic to technology and wifi. Each backstory alludes to the disturbing ubiquity of smartphones and AI in our lives — and might provide clues to something more sinister afoot.

Rockwell is well-suited to play this frantic individual who may be from the future or simply mentally disturbed; it’s unfortunate, then, that the script doesn’t give the Oscar-winning actor a funnier, more dimensional character. Instead, his dishevelled soldier is all snide retorts and yelled exposition, which forces Rockwell to expend so much of his own kinetic, loose-screw energy. His costars acquit themselves more easily as their characters are meant to be more level-headed, although they too lack sufficient quality quips.

Good Luck’s most striking flashback belongs to Susan (Juno Temple), a mother grieving her son who was killed in a school shooting. Soon after, she becomes aware of a unique company that can clone the departed — an industry that, grimly, has become popular considering the many fatal shootings across America. Temple brings the right amount of shock and revulsion to the sequence, her character wanting to bring back her boy while appalled at the very idea of replicating him. The filmmakers hit upon a potentially chilling commentary on the scourge of gun violence — and Americans’ passive acceptance of the ongoing crisis — but unfortunately Good Luck resorts to obvious jokes and easy observations.

The unidentified man and his team will brave masked assassins, the surprisingly well-armed homeless as well as some fantastical, AI-inspired obstacles on their quest. Verbinski’s visual acumen makes the most of this colourful, bloody romp, which frequently flirts with sci-fi and horror. Good Luck diagnoses an important societal ill in AI, but its hip, fashionably embittered attitude only takes the storytelling so far. Rather than fleshing out its characters, the picture uses them as props to mock our obsession with our phones and, predictably, young people’s inability to interact with the real world.. For a film about the evils of artificial intelligence, Good Luck doesn’t have enough of a human element.