Netflix brings us a story about a man who dies from the shock of winning the lottery, and his friends who defraud the lottery to collect his winnings.

Well, that's much of what it said on the wrapper.

We're set in a tiny old village in Ireland with 52 people in it. The village is old both because it's been around forever, and because nearly all of its citizens are retirement-age or older. Save two younger fellas competing for the affections of one younger lass and her son, everyone in the village is to be well respected.

There are a pair of stories, which don't seem related at all except to provide some touch of drama.

In the main story, our heroes, Jackie and Michael, are first set to find the winner of the lottery that they've learned is from their village, apparently before the other citizens. They hope to endear this person in hopes of sharing in the winnings. After a pinnacle dinner party for all of the recent lottery players, they learn of the one fella who didn't attend: Ned Devine. Seeking him out, we find he's died of apparent shock; he's sitting in front of the telly with a wicked happy smile on his face and the winning ticket still in his hand.

In a dream that night, Jackie dreams of a boat ride into the light with Ned. Ned wanted to share the chicken dinner that Jackie had brought. Jackie declines, but upon waking he decides that the message Ned was sending from the great beyond was that Ned wanted to share the lottery winnings.

After this, they conspire to defraud the lottery of the winnings. Ned had the foresight to write his name on the ticket, so one of them must pretend to be him to collect. The lottery man comes and accepts one of them as Ned, but insists on interviewing other residents. Presumably they have no reliable method of identifying people in the village or country...

This prompts the heroes to involve the whole town, for which they agree to split the 6.8 million pound lottery evenly amongst all 52 residents (which I would have thought to be reduced by one with the discovery of Ned's passing, but we'll forgive this oversight), but only if they all agree. Not one of the townmembers disagrees at the town meeting, especially after hearing the size of the winnings.

The other story is the wooing of the only fair maiden in the town. She must be the town hussy, too, because both of the suitors believe they're the child's father. The story is barely a love story of any consequence either. In a few short scenes we see the two fellas putting their moves on. The obviously preferred fella has the down-side of being the local pig-farmer, with a persistent odor. The other fella's a bit of a bully and boor.

The boy pokes up in the film from time-to-time, having little to do with the lottery scheme. He carries on a discussion with the town's replacement priest about why he'd become a priest; the boy offering that he'd have a hard time working for someone that he'd never met, getting paid just the happiness of a job well done. Later they discuss the lottery scheme just enough to let us know the regular priest is greedy and would go along with the scheme for his fair share.

The entire town agrees, save the town spinster. She's decided it'd behoove them to give her a bigger share of the winnings or she'll turn 'em all in. She demands near double the 10% lottery evidently pays for turning in fraud. The townspeople decline her offer, and despite their commitment to move forward only if everyone agrees, they move forward without her.

She lives up to her promise, and wheels herself to the only working phone in town (the others taken out by recent weather), a payphone perilously perched on a cliff next to the winding freeway into town.

In what was supposed to probably be an ironic twist, the lottery man is leaving town at just that moment. His hayfever causes him to sneeze, swerving wildly about the curve. He misses the booth, but his swerving causes an inbound vehicle to swerve to miss him, but it clips the booth sending it and the woman flying to their combined perilous end. Perhaps to provide us with some certainty of not reporting the incident, the town's priest is the driver of that vehicle.

The side love story has nothing to do with the main story of Ned's ticket and the town's scheme, until the end when we find that Ned's the father (ew), but the mother would rather have the attentions of one of the suitors than the whole of the lottery winnings, which the main character says is rightly the son's.

I had thought the boy would turn into the voice of reason, or something. He had some interesting comments when he talked to the priest. He also wasn't part of the "everyone" that the town required to participate in the scheme, although he was part of the everyone with whom the winnings would be split.