Highland Park

Highland Park

Year: 2013

Runtime: 83 mins

Language: English

Director: Andrew Meieran

ComedyDrama

When budget cuts threaten to eliminate all the faculty jobs at Highland Park, a group of teachers decides to pool their money and buy lottery tickets, hoping for a life-changing win. Their fate rests on the numbers they've faithfully played for a decade, but will fortune finally smile upon them?

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Timeline & Setting – Highland Park (2013)

Explore the full timeline and setting of Highland Park (2013). Follow every major event in chronological order and see how the environment shapes the story, characters, and dramatic tension.

Time period

Location

Highland Park, Michigan

Highland Park is depicted as an economically depressed Detroit suburb where the school and community bear the brunt of budget cuts. The city's infrastructure is crumbling and the mayor pushes vanity projects over essential services. The setting frames the stakes around education, public services, and the possibility of revival through collective action.

🏚️ Economic decline 🏫 School community 🗳️ Local politics

Last Updated: October 03, 2025 at 20:05

Main Characters – Highland Park (2013)

Meet the key characters of Highland Park (2013), with detailed profiles, motivations, and roles in the plot. Understand their emotional journeys and what they reveal about the film’s deeper themes.

Lloyd Howard (Billy Burke)

A former troublemaker turned devoted school principal, Lloyd carries a heavy weight of responsibility. He starts as disillusioned and becomes more assertive and morally awakened as he navigates budget cuts, political pressure, and the lottery’s promised future for his students and staff.

🧭 Leadership 💼 Responsibility 🕊️ Redemption

Ed (Danny Glover)

A retired maintenance worker who still keeps the school’s furnaces running, Ed organises the lottery ticket. He experiences an epiphany and later reveals a personal flaw when his actions threaten the group, prompting a speech about shared identity.

🧭 Prudence 🎯 Loyalty 🗣️ Speak truth

Destiny (Bo Derek)

A waitress whose nametag reads Destiny, she offers a symbolic nudge toward fate by handing fortune cookies and guiding thoughts that set the plot in motion.

🎁 Fate 🍀 Opportunity 🪄 Guidance

Shirley Paine (Parker Posey)

Mayor of Highland Park, she relentlessly trims budgets in ways that harm the community while pursuing vanity projects that benefit her elite connections.

🏛️ White-collar power 🗳️ Political ambition ♟️ Manipulation

Jessie (Eric Ladin)

A desperate ex-bus driver who falls on hard times, attempting a robbery and facing the consequences of unemployment and family strain, illustrating the human cost of economic decline.

💡 Desperation 🧩 Fragility 🕊️ Resilience

Last Updated: October 03, 2025 at 20:05

Major Themes – Highland Park (2013)

Explore the central themes of Highland Park (2013), from psychological, social, and emotional dimensions to philosophical messages. Understand what the film is really saying beneath the surface.

🌤️ Hope & Renewal

In the face of long-standing hardship, the lottery dream sparks a renewed sense of possibility for the community. The effort to win becomes a catalyst for people to imagine a better future for Highland Park. Lloyd, Ed, and the others confront fear and disillusionment and choose to pursue meaningful changes rather than resignation.

🏛️ Power & Corruption

The story exposes how political power can divert funds from essential services to vanity projects. Mayor Shirley Paine’s budget cuts threaten the community’s well-being and reveal self-serving motives. The group exposes corruption and pressures the city to redirect money back to its citizens.

🎲 Luck vs Reality

The winning numbers bring euphoric expectations of swift transformation, but human flaws and tension surface under pressure. Ed’s late ticket purchase and the revelation of different numbers test the group's trust. The film suggests that luck alone cannot change people—integrity and communal action are key.

Last Updated: October 03, 2025 at 20:05

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Explore Movie Threads

Discover curated groups of movies connected by mood, themes, and story style. Browse collections built around emotion, atmosphere, and narrative focus to easily find films that match what you feel like watching right now.

Movies about community resilience like Highland Park

Ordinary people unite against economic hardship to save their shared way of life.If you liked Highland Park, explore more movies about small towns and communities banding together against economic hardship. This thread features character-driven stories with a hopeful tone, steady pacing, and a focus on collective action and redemption against the odds.

community-drivenhopefulresilientdowntroddenanxiousupliftingsmall town

Narrative Summary

The narrative typically follows a group of ordinary people, often in a small town or workplace, whose livelihoods are threatened by external forces like budget cuts or corporate greed. Their journey begins with desperation, leads to a collective, often unconventional plan, and culminates in a victory that is as much about restoring dignity and community spirit as it is about solving the material problem.

Why These Movies?

Movies are grouped here because they share a core theme of community resilience, a hopeful tone that balances serious themes with an uplifting spirit, and a character-driven plot focused on collective action rather than individual heroics.

Movies about lottery and redemption like Highland Park

Characters on the edge turn to a longshot gamble as their last hope for redemption.Find more films like Highland Park where characters use the lottery as a catalyst for change. These movies often blend comedy and drama, feature medium emotional weight, and explore themes of economic anxiety, friendship, and finding hope in desperate situations.

anxioushopefuldesperateredemptioneconomic hardshipimprobable winfriendship

Narrative Summary

The plot revolves around a high-stakes gamble, typically a lottery ticket, that becomes a symbol of hope for characters at their lowest point. The story builds tension around the outcome of the gamble, but the true arc is often about the characters' personal growth and the strengthening of their relationships during the wait, with the 'win' serving as a catalyst for deeper, more meaningful change than just financial gain.

Why These Movies?

These films are connected by a specific narrative device—the lottery as a central plot element—coupled with a mix of comedy and drama, a medium intensity level, and a thematic focus on economic anxiety and the search for redemption through chance.

Unlock the Full Story of Highland Park

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Highland Park Summary

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Highland Park Summary

Highland Park Timeline

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Highland Park Timeline

Highland Park Spoiler-Free Summary

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Highland Park Spoiler-Free Summary

More About Highland Park

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