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Overall Rating
 Awesome: 13.64%
Worth A Look: 36.36%
Average: 13.64%
Pretty Bad: 13.64%
Total Crap: 22.73%
6 reviews, 30 user ratings
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| Lucky Number Slevin |
by Lybarger
"It’s actually even money."
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The first act of "Lucky Number Slevin" promises a payoff the rest of the film only partially delivers. The setup has intriguingly quirky characters, some of whom don’t have real names, and a juicy crisis. By the time the final twists and turns are revealed, though, it’s hard not to feel double-crossed like the characters.Jason Smilovic’s script borrows from everything from Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s "North by Northwest" (the characters even acknowledge this in the dialogue) to Quentin Tarantino’s warped chronologies. Despite the originality deficit, there’s still a strong enough plot to make this thing interesting.
The title character, Slevin (Jason Hartnett) is living an experience that makes Hell seem like a vacation resort. After having lost his job and his girlfriend, he flies to New York, where he’s mugged after he barely gets off the plane.
His friend Nick was supposed to pick him up at the airport, but is nowhere to be found. This may be due to the fact that Nick owes two feuding gangsters enough to pay a small house.
The first, known only as The Boss (Morgan Freeman), demands that Nick pay his debt by murdering the son of his rival, The Rabbi (Sir Ben Kingsley). The Rabbi (who gets his name because he really is a rabbi), however, wants Nick’s enormous debt to him paid back in a week.
Because Nick is nowhere to be found, Slevin winds up being mistaken for him and having to pay dearly for his friend’s transgressions. He also encounters Nick’s friendly and somewhat nosy neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Liu), a suspicious cop (Stanley Tucci) and a slippery hit man known only as “Mr. Goodkat” (a chillingly creepy Bruce Willis).
Once all the characters are introduced and the setup established, “Lucky Number Slevin” seems so eager to snooker the viewers that it winds up conning itself in the process. The surprise twists aren’t all that surprising, and Smilovic and director Paul McGuigan (“Wicker Park”) practically shoehorn the rest of the movie to fit.
That’s a shame because the opening act is more compelling than what follows. Milovic and McGuigan can’t seem to figure out what to do with their characters, especially Lindsey.
Her eventual romance with Slevin comes off as rushed and unconvincing. It’s hard to believe these two would just leap into bed simply because she wants to be Nancy Drew (she’s already a coroner).
You also wonder how many women (and there are some out there), who are so fluent in James Bond lore. After a while, all the pop culture references like this one get old. With a setup this intriguing, it might have been better for Milovic to concentrate more of the chatter on the situation at hand instead of what sounds like a Trivial Pursuit game gone unchecked.The fist half hour of this film is so promising that I’m almost willing to ignore the mess that follows. Almost.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13578&reviewer=382
originally posted: 04/07/06 22:52:16
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2006 Sundance Film Festival For more in the 2006 Sundance Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival For more in the 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
07-Apr-2006 (R)
DVD: 12-Sep-2006
UK
24-Feb-2006
Australia
09-Nov-2006
![[trailer]](/images/icon/trailericon.gif) Trailer
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