LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN is a miserable mess that plays like a third-rate David Mamet, with dialog as overcooked as English vegetables. "Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in Monte Carlo and came in third," says Bruce Willis, as a weird character called -- I kid you not -- Mr. Goodkat. He tells us this to show us the difference between a "story," like the previous quote, and something real like the "Kansas City Shuffle." The convoluted plot involves the Kansas City Shuffle, but, when you leave the theater, you'll still have no real idea what it is. You won't know, but you won't care either.
Mr. Goodkat is a hit man who is in town to kill some people. A lot of people get murdered in the movie, which is pretty lethargic when it isn't splattering someone's blood against the nearest solid surface. A black comedy, the script appears to have been created by shredding the screenplay for every film noir ever made and then reassembling the pieces at random.
With one exception -- we'll get to it in a minute -- the movie features a very large and talented cast, all wasted because of Jason Smilovic's over-the-top script and Paul McGuigan's lack of direction. In addition to Willis, the movie stars Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley as The Boss and The Rabbi. They are warring bad guys whose office windows look out on one another's from their respective skyscrapers. The murderous Rabbi has a gay son called The Fairy, who gets murdered.
The hall-of-mirrors plot ridicules the audience for even trying to keep up. It is so excessively and smugly clever that the film might as well be subtitled, WE'RE SMART BUT YOU'RE NOT. In the first act, you'll likely be thinking that you wish the movie would try to make at least a little sense. But by the time the last act finally drags its way onto the screen, you'll be so angry at the film for wasting your time that you're likely to want to start throwing the proverbial rotten tomatoes at it, quite literally. This is something of a shame since it is only in the last fifteen minutes that the movie is watchable. The long explanation for the silly story is actually kind of interesting, but it is most certainly not worth waiting for.
Two final notes. Lucy Liu, as both the story's love interest and the coroner, is consistently good, something that can't be said of any other actor in the picture. Finally, the one bit of casting that should have warned me from the very beginning was that of Josh Hartnett. I have some movie rules that have proven almost always reliable. One is my "Josh Hartnett rule," which is that any movie which thinks they need him will probably stink. Although he personally isn't what's wrong with this movie, that he was chosen to be in it should have been a clue to me that it would be bad.
LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN runs too long at 1:49. It is rated R for "strong violence, sexuality and language" and would be acceptable for most teenagers.
The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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