Just the other day, I was wondering where Rachel McAdams had disappeared to. Don't ask me why, it just came to me. The last film I recall seeing her in was The Family Stone, but that was back in 2005. Where did she go? She just fell off the map. Come to think about it, it is probably for the best; with her string of films including The Notebook, Red Eye, and Wedding Crashers, she was beginning to blow up. Better to back off a bit for fear of burning out.

In any case, she is back in The Lucky Ones and just began shooting a new Sherlock Holmes film. With these and two others in post-production, it seems safe to say that she is back and ready to make an impression. It doesn't hurt that The Lucky Ones is a good film.

The Lucky Ones, at its heart, is a road film. Three strangers are thrown together, bonded by similar circumstances, and forced to travel together. Along the way, the trio sheds the stranger tag and becomes an oddly dysfunctional family, brought together as friends by their their newly shared experience. It can be surprising what can happen when you are forced to be in close proximity with others for an extended period of time.

Fred Cheaver (Tim Robbins), a lifelong military man, is on his way home, for good. Colee Dunn (Rachel McAdams) was shot in the leg and has thirty days of leave, during which she plans on returning a guitar to the family of a friend killed in action. TK Poole (Michael Pena) was caught in the privates by a piece of shrapnel and, like Colee, has thirty days of leave to recuperate. These three meet on the flight from the Middle East to New York en route to their respective final destinations.

Of course, things do not go the way they are planned. Once in New York, they discover that all of the connecting flights have been canceled due to a power outage. The decision is made to split a rental. Off they go, beginning a journey that will have long lasting and meaningful effects on all three.