User:Quovadisdaddy
O Lucky Man! Plot
Mick Travis is the most promising new sales recruit at Imperial Coffee. His easy manner and winning smile bring him to the attention of Miss Rowe, the training manager. When it is revealed that a senior salesman in the company has gone rogue, Miss Rowe proposes that Mick be recruited to replace him and take over his coveted north-east sales sector.
After his first successful sale to a large hotel, Mick is invited by the hotel manager to attend a private sex club, where Mick makes many valuable contacts, including ranking government and police figures. On returning to his lodgings, he is contacted by Imperial Coffee and is informed that his sector will be expanded to include all of Scotland, requiring his immediate departure. In his lodging, there is an old tailor who claims to have known Mick’s rogue predecessor. As a parting gift, the tailor gives Mick a suit of shiny material that Mick believes is gold. As he departs, the tailor gives him the following advice: “Try not to die like a dog.”
En route to Scotland, Mick becomes lost and finds himself at the gates of a military facility. He is apprehended by a military detachment and, despite his protestations of innocence, taken into custody. He is briefly interrogated and tortured by two men in plain clothes who apparently believe him to be a foreign spy. To avoid further torture, Mick signs a confession and answers several questions relating to his movements as a spy. When a siren sounds, the two interrogators quickly flee the scene, and Mick is shortly after freed from his restraints by a tea-lady.
Mick flees the facility which is being gradually engulfed by fire. He makes his way back to his car, which is now also in flames. He retrieves his special suit from the car shortly before it explodes. Mick makes his way through a blasted and burning landscape. When the clothes he is wearing are ruined by a downpour, he changes into his special suit. After he has done so, he finds himself in an idyllic pastoral landscape and drinks from a fresh-water stream. He discovers a Christian church where a congregation is singing. Hungry and exhausted, he enters the church and collapses in a pew. When he awakes, the church is empty, but a large quantity of fresh produce has been collected at the altar. He is about to feed himself when he is warned by the vicar’s wife that the food is for God. However, the woman takes pity on him and feeds him from her own breast. His strength renewed, Mick joyously makes his way back to the road, accompanied by two children. When he reaches the motorway, he decides to head back to London. A car stops for him and asks if he would like to make some quick money by participating in a medical experiment. Mick agrees and is taken to a private clinic run by Professor Millar, who runs experimental transplant procedures. Millar informs Mick that his physiognomy is of a rare sort that would be of particular value to their research. Whilst awaiting surgery, Mick sneaks from his room and encounters a post-op patient whose head seems to have been transplanted onto the body of a four-legged animal. On seeing this, Mick flees the clinic in terror.
He is next picked up by group of musicians in a van. Inside the van, he discovers a young woman, Patricia, hidden under a blanket, and he immediately falls in love with her. On returning to London, Mick stays with Patricia. Over breakfast, Patricia reveals that her father, Sir James Burgess, is a wealthy copper magnate. Mick decides to insinuate his way into Sir James’s company on the pretence that has important information to report on his daughter’s welfare. During his interview with Sir James, a disgruntled senior employee commits suicide by jumping from Sir James’s office window. Sir James's assistant, in attempting to prevent the suicide, also falls to his death. Mick is immediately recruited to replace the assistant.
Mick’s first assignment with Sir James is to attend negotiations with Dr Munda, president of the African nation of Zingara, who is trying to convince Sir James to establish operations in his country. As part of the negotiation, Munda requests large quantities of a chemical weapon called “honey” to guarantee that Sir James’ operations will protected from local insurgencies. Mick oversees the delivery of the “honey” by the British Air Force to Zingara.
A dinner party is held at Sir James’s home to finalise the business transaction with Munda. Mick encounters Patricia receiving a marriage proposal by a pathetic English aristocrat. Afterward, she informs Mick that she may indeed accept the proposal. Sir James offers Munda a large quantity of gold bullion for the right to set up operations in Zingara, but, since the gold must be exported to Zingara illegally, Sir James has Mick framed for the crime involved in its delivery. Mick is found guilty of the crime and is sentenced to five years imprisonment.
The prison system in which Mick is incarcerated prides itself on its compassion and its willingness to attend the spiritual and intellectual rehabilitation of its inmates. At the end of his sentence, Mick expresses that he is fully transformed as a human being. Before he has secured any place to live, he makes a large donation to a Salvation Army band. The band initially praises his generous spirit, but they soon condemn him when he announces that he no longer believes in “sin” and that he regards humanity as a united brotherhood. The band and their followers fall to their knees to pray for Mick, but Mick remains upright and walks away.
Mick becomes aware of a disturbance in a nearby neighbourhood. When he investigates, he discovers that a local woman, Mrs Richards, has barricaded herself in her flat, where she is promising to commit suicide. In attempt to save Mrs Richards, Mick puts his own safety at risk by scaling the wall of her flat and appealing to her through the window. He assures her that she has every reason in the world to continue living, and he recites various inspirational poetic works to convince her to change her mind. Mrs Richards, however, is implacable in her decision. Mick falls three storeys to the street below.
Mick is awoken several hours later by a policeman who informs him that Mrs Richards has completed her suicide. Mick wanders away despondently and finds a mobile soup kitchen. Although he is hungry and destitute himself, he does not accept any food, but rather volunteers to assist the proprietor in her work. The proprietor eagerly accepts Mick's offer and, giving him a large pot of soup and several paper cups, directs him to distribute it to a community of tramps gathered around a bonfire. As he is distributing the soup, he sees Patricia, now destitute. She recognises Mick and informs him that she had accepted the marriage proposal, and indicates that the unconscious figure she is cradling is her husband. The rest of the tramps quickly become hostile towards Mick; they disdain his patronising “charity” and pelt him with stones.
The next morning, Mick encounters a man handing out invitations to an open film audition. Mick attends the audition where he is singled out by the film’s director. The director asks him to strike a number of poses for a photographer; however, when the director asks Mick to smile, Mick asks “why?” and states that one cannot smile without a reason. The director assaults Mick in frustration and Mick struggles to bring a smile to his face. Yet, when he finally succeeds in smiling, he is brought to a state of near ecstasy: surrounded by many figures from his own past, happy and reconciled, he dances to upbeat music within a collective brotherhood of humanity.