Lucky Number Slevin

Hartnett (right) and Liu (left)/The Weinstein Company

Josh Hartnett is Slevin, a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. While visiting his friend's apartment in Manhattan, Slevin is mistaken for a man who owes money to a man you don't want to owe money to. This man is "The Boss" (Morgan Freeman). Now the seemingly innocent Slevin finds himself caught in the midst of a bitter rivalry between "The Boss" and his rival counterpart, "The Rabbi" (Ben Kingsley). Besides that, Slevin is now under surveillance by a relentless Detective (Stanley Tucci) who is trying to take down the two mob bosses. A world class assassin named Goodkat (Bruce Willis) is also on Slevin's trail. The only one not out to get Slevin is his cute neighbor Lindsey, who's trying to help Slevin make sense of all the chaos. Lucky Number Slevin is directed by Paul McGuigan (Wicker Park, Gangster #1) from a script by Jason Smilovic.

In the tradition of twisting gangster films ranging from Pulp Fiction to The Usual Suspects, Slevin tries hard to rise above the endless imitators of the previously mentioned, succeeding only from time to time. The story itself offers an engaging set-up, but the real story doesn't come along until the film's final twist, which comes all-too-expectedly too late in the game. The twist is not entirely predictable and I will certainly not reveal it, but the existence of a twist at all has become a cliché in this type of film. Why not just offer a straight up caper at this point?

Either way, Slevin is entertaining more for its casting and colorful characters than for the evolution of the story that accompanies it. As much as I've often heard Josh Hartnett take ribbings, I still think this guy has talent. He's got an undeniable "star" quality about him and he's compelling to watch on screen. His wise-cracking, loud-mouthed Slevin character, who wears a towel for the first third of the film (for all ya'll ladies out there) is fun to follow, if only deserving of the occasional slap in the face or punch to the abdomen (don't worry, he gets both). Hartnett seems to be having fun playing the part, and that energy comes through on screen.

The rest of the cast provides the backbone of the story. Freeman is cast against his usual grandfatherly type as a thoughtful and ruthless gangster. Much like the meeting of Pacino and DeNiro in Heat, the story builds towards the penultimate meeting between Freeman's "Boss" and Kingsley's "Rabbi." The scene is great, but also a perfect example of the larger problem with Lucky Number Slevin. There are lots of great sequences and great performances that stand up well on their own. The film itself, on the other hand, doesn't add up to a whole lot.

Shirtless Slevin meets "The Boss" /The Weinstein Company

Bruce Willis has played this part before, but he's good in a relatively small role as Goodkat. His character doesn't speak a lot, instead providing a suitably icy stare and looking kinda amusing in flashback scenes sporting 70's throwback clothes with long hair and the first signs of a receding hairline. The biggest breakout performance of Slevin exists in Lucy Liu, who finally breaks out of her typical hard-edged bad girl routine to play a sweet, innocent, fun-loving girl. She's the dream-girl neighbor to Slevin, bouncing in and out of his apartment, looking consistently cute and providing the needed comic relief. It's refreshing to see Liu do something different for once and I hope she gets the chance again.

As with his last film, Wicker Park, which also stars Hartnett, McGuigan and his lead seem to have the same problem. I enjoyed Wicker as well on a level (maybe even a little more than Slevin), but both films have failed to stick in my mind for very long after viewing. Slevin drags here and there, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it boring, it's just unexceptional.

Back in the mid-90's, an endless barrage of Tarantino imitators hit the silver screen, each one offering their own un-unique brand of slick gangster tales and witty dialogue. If the originators and the imitators hadn't already come down the pipeline, maybe I would have enjoyed Slevin more. Who's to say? The crime genre is one of my favorites and I liked many of the ideas Slevin had and I liked a lot of the characters, it just never grabbed hold of me the way I hoped it would.