Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
Lucky Number Slevin
Rated R for strong violence, sexuality and language;
The pervasive tough cool in "Lucky Number Slevin" is no more than posturing. It's especially so in the case of Josh Hartnett, who plays Slevin: You know he'd be more at home playing an Ivy League preppie.
Slevin checks into the New York apartment of absentee friend Nick, whose disappearance may have something to do with the $96,000 he owes a mobster.
Slevin, mistaken for Nick by several others, becomes involved with Nick's neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Liu), hit man Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis), Detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci) and rival mobsters known as The Boss (Morgan Freeman) and Schlomo (Ben Kingsley), a Hasidic Jew who's also called The Rabbi.
The story is convoluted and written in the sort of epigrammatic dialogue real people don't speak. The film is extremely stylistic in the now-worn-thin school of "Pulp Fiction" construction.
Jason Smilovic's screenplay, directed by the Scottish Paul McGuigan ("Wicker Park," "Gangster No. 1"), is sustained not by character or substance but by audience disorientation. There isn't a single believable character or relationship. It's all splintered narrative - ribbons of stories within stories.
The Kansas City Shuffle, an insider's phrase for misdirection, is maintained by the deliberate avoidance of clear speech much less the exchange of rudimentary information any involved person would ask for.
If no one matters, if no one is honest, what's the point?
