Lucky Number Slevin

Lucky Number Slevin came out at a time in my life that I was just starting to delve into more graphic movies for the first time. It wasn’t the first hard R movie I saw, but I do remember it in a string of films I was interested in because it was a level I had never really seen before. I’m not totally sure what interested me about this movie, but it had some intrigue so I thought I’d check it out. This is the first time I’ve seen it since that initial viewing and since that was such a long time ago, it was like I was watching it for the first time… except I knew exactly all the surprises and twists that are essential parts of the movie.

Lucky Number Slevin is a pretty self-contained story about a young man named Slevin (played by Josh Hartnett). Slevin has a bad day in which he loses his job, his girlfriend cheats on him, and he gets mugged. He decides to spend a few days visiting his friend Nick who seems to have disappeared. Slevin meets the spunky neighbor of his friend Nick, Lindsey (played by Lucy Liu?) and the two hit it off. However, she has a horrible feeling that Nick is in trouble. Before they start their investigation, Slevin is taken and introduced to the leaders of two mafia organizations only known as The Boss (played by Morgan Freeman) and the Rabbi (played by Ben Kingsley). Each of them believe he is Nick Fisher and that he owes them both a large sum of money. These two gangs are in a cold war between the two of them and I’ll be honest, that is actually the more interesting part about this story. But I’ll get to that in a little bit.

Slevin must find a way to obtain the money for The Boss and The Rabbi before they kill him. All the while, a mysterious hitman named Mr. Goodcat (played by Bruce Willis) is shadowing the whole ordeal.

This is a strange movie. On one hand, the story is your typical mafia revenge story. But at the same time, there are just so many ridiculous elements to this story that make it so much more different that your run of the mill mafia revenge story.

The biggest strengths of this movie is the dialogue. This movie is very much a Tarantino-esque film because of all the witty dialogue and exchanges between the characters in what should be very scary situations. Furthermore, the set up is so simple and so ridiculous that it feels almost satire-like, like a Tarantino film might do now and again. However, the other part about this movie is that there are some incredibly serious parts. I won’t spoil the ending, but there are no laughs like there are early on in the film and its very dramatic. Tarantino films, while they cover a dark subject matter, still manage to maintain levity and a ridiculousness about them even in the darkest and more dramatic parts. This movie does not do that.

I don’t want to make it sound like this movie is trying to rip off a Tarantino style film, or that those movies should be compared to this one. It just the first thing I can think of to describe the style of this movie, and if that is what they’re going for, it just didn’t strike the balance of ridiculously simple and fun to dark subject matter and serious moments.

A lot of this movie revolves around the twist at the end of the movie. And while it is a decent twist, its really easy to spot it well before the movie shows its cards. It all connects with a story that Mr. Goodcat tells at the beginning of the movie about a fixed horse race. The problem is, after that story they just never speak of it until its brought back into the fold for the twist ending. Its like the movie wanted us to forget about that story they told at the beginning and the truth is, it’s kind of hard to forget. If you’re paying attention at all, you can probably guess the twist ending from the get go and while there might be some parts of the twist you didn’t see coming, its still pretty easy to spot.

Now I have to give credit where its due, if you’ve seen the movie before, it is kind of fun watching it a second time and recognizing the hints and clues that will lead you to the twist before the movie reveals it. However, since a lot of the movie is focused on that twist, it kind of takes the wind out of the sails for the rest of the narrative because you know why something is happening, or you know

why a character does something. While its fun watching it a second time to recognize the clues, I can’t imagine watching this movie again because the twist is known.

And since it’s such a self-contained story, it doesn’t have a huge impact. The scale of this story is very personal that you might come out of it saying… well… that was a movie but why did I have to care?

And a lot of that comes down to the characters.

I don’t want to say the characters are bad, I just don’t think they’re written incredibly well. And that goes back into the fact that a lot of this movie evolves around the twist ending. You can’t really get to know these characters that well because they’re trying to hide who exactly they are.

Again without spoilers, I’m going to go over the characters and the performances that go along with them.

Josh Hartnett is an actor I go back and forth on whether or not I like him. On one hand, he’ll always be that dopey, wooden faced friend of Ben Affleck’s from Pearl Harbor, and lord knows I just want to forget about that movie, but at the same time, I’ve seen some pretty good performances out of him, like what he did in Black Hawk Down. On top of that, the guy has really gone obscure and can only be found these days doing one or two movies a year and they’re all really indie flicks. I really can’t put a beat on this guy as far as his career goes. Now for this movie, I enjoyed him. I think he fit the whole snarky and sarcastic tone of the movie and I really enjoyed his flare to it. I’m not going to write a raving review about his performance, but I thought it was decent. Granted, Hartnett always has a blank wooden stare on his face in everything he does and I can’t always tell a good performance from him. However, in this film I got something. And for what it was, I enjoyed it.

The main people worth talking about in this movie are Morgan Freeman as The Boss, and Ben Kingsley as The Rabbi. While they aren’t the most inspiring roles of their careers, they are the most experienced actors on screen and they do a good job. Its worth noting that this is a very different performance from Morgan Freeman that I have ever seen. The guy has played the “bad guy” in movies before but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him pull out a performance like this. He’s always very calm and very collected. This movie, especially at the end, I actually saw him show someone who is a little bit unhinged.

The problem with these two is that it doesn’t seem like the movie had the budget to have a lot of screen time for them. They show up to set up the conflict, then the rest of the movie is the love story between Slevin and Lucy Liu's character. 

Speaking of which, I go back and forth on whether or not I liked Lucy Liu at all in this movie. On one hand, they do a decent job at setting up this random happen stance relationship, in that they just happen to run into each other, she's quirky, he's charming, it works. But on the other hand it doesn't work as much when they suddenly fall in love after one day. While I thought the writing for these two was charming and decent at setting something up in a very short time, it doesn't really put aside the fact that it set something up in a very short time. 

And then there's Bruce Willis. 

The thing about Bruce Willis is that even when he doesn't say anything, he's just built up an image of himself that he can just look at you and he will be intimidated. So on one hand, his character does work because he is this hitman that is so shrouded in mystery that not saying anything really works to his advantage. 

But on the other hand, this movie kind of falls under the category of Bruce Willis not really trying because he probably knows his looks alone intimidate people and that's all he needs to do for this movie so he can just kind of phone it in. 

So overall, what can I say about Lucky Number Slevin? Its a self contained story, which is a good thing... until you know the twists and turns and the surprise is gone. Its well written, but I think its trying to be more than it actually is. And the parts that they should have focused on, they either didn't have the money for, or they wanted to focus on other things and didn't give the things they should have focused on the time those things needed. 

Its a decent film, just not something I'm gonna rave about. 

But those are my thoughts on Lucky Number Slevin. Have you seen it? What did you think about it? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

I'll leave you with this. God bless Bruce Willis. He's this great actor, he's got a bunch of action franchises to his belt, especially Die Hard... but there's a theory out there that says that with every movie he does bald, he gives less and less of a crap. Here's him with Donald Trump hair... take from that what you will. Enjoy!