Review: As 'Luck' has it, we like the handicap

Meanwhile, wheelchair-bound Marcus (Kevin Dunn), and his track pals Renzo (Ritchie Coster), Jerry (Jason Gedrick) and Lonnie (Ian Hart) circle around a "Pick-Six" score (betting on the winner of six races).

The jockeys at the park -- like Ronnie Jenkins (played by real-life jockey Gary Stevens) -- are either pawns or athletes, or both, while agent Joey Rathburn (Richard Kind) keeps them in line. And . . . old-timer Walter Smith (Nick Nolte) -- onetime trainer and now owner -- has his own dreams pinned on a horse.

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The characters are exotic too, lifted from a Bruegel canvas, with the hounds of hell on their heels. They're all a bunch of track rats, hustlers, lowlifes and mooks eager to make a score or settle one. A morbidity hangs over all of them: There's no joy in their actions, only a primal urge. Milch has projected some of his own hard gambling past onto each of them. He once said in a profile that "there's no satisfaction" in winning. "No joy in the compulsive act. It's a sterile recapitulation."