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Number Slevin" is like a house of cards with
baroque design -- an exercise in style that, while
dazzling in its details, leaves little to savor
other than the effort necessary to make such an
artificial construction. The labyrinthine plot of
this sometimes comic caper kicks into gear when a
man named Slevin (Josh Hartnett) gets mistaken for
a buddy who has skipped out on major debts he owes
to two rival criminal barons played with relish by
Morgan Freeman and Sir Ben Kingsley. Freeman's
character in particular puts the screws to Slevin,
leaving him with only one way out of his fix: by
murdering his rival's son.
As an actor, Hartnett often
wears a placid expression not unlike that of
yesterday's teen heartthrob, Keanu Reeves.
Hartnett's eyes, however, exude a level of
intelligence far enough above that projected by
Reeves for us to respect him. Which is to say, he
acts amusingly befuddled quite well, and that is
what his part in "Lucky Number Slevin"
requires. That and getting punched in the nose a
lot.
So, while the amusingly
befuddled Slevin wraps his head around things, he
finds himself under yet another, but more welcome
assault, this one levied by the chipper presence
of Lindsey (Lucy Liu), a neighbor of the friend
for whom Slevin has been mistaken. Liu shows a new
side of herself in her invigorating, showy
performance as the perky mortician eager to play
gumshoe. Her character adds a healthy shot of fun
to the complicated goings-on, and in doing so the
actress nearly upstages the
Mt.
McKinley
of acting talent assembled for this project.
In addition to the major
players, "Lucky Number Slevin" features
the exquisite Stanley Tucci and Robert Forrester
in bit roles. The last of the main characters is
Goodkat (Hartnett's "Sin
City" co-star Bruce Willis), a man we
know is dangerous if only by the tightly coiled
energy coming from Willis. For the most part,
Goodkat lurks in the corners of the action while
we, the audience, try to figure out how he is
going to fit into things.
At its most basic,
"Lucky Number Slevin" is a con story. We
know this because Goodkat tells us so in the
opening minutes of the film. He does this by way
of a highly improbable monologue delivered to a
stranger, in which he provides the historic facts
giving rise to his elaborate scheme. While the
filmmakers did not superimpose the words
"forced exposition" on the screen during
this sequence, they might as well have.
Nonetheless, the combined talents of director Paul
Guigan and Willis make the whole thing
entertaining enough.
A third, unseen hand at work
on "Lucky Number Slevin" belongs to
screenwriter Jason Smilovic, who, it would appear,
has been heavily influenced by the works of
Quentin Tarantino. Studios wasted untold yards of
celluloid in the 1990s trying to clone Tarantino's
cinematic confections composed of gore, quirky
characters, and riffs on obscure topics.
Smilovic's script features all of these elements,
and as far as homage to Tarantino goes,
"Lucky Number Slevin" is more explicit
than most. It even contains an allusion to a
famous, scatological monologue in "Pulp
Fiction" about a wristwatch.
Perhaps inspired by all of
this, the casting director fills the playlist with
Tarantino veterans like Willis ("Pulp
Fiction"), Liu ("Kill
Bill: Vol. 1"), and Robert Forrester
("Jackie Brown"). And it is easy to see
why these people were attracted to the project.
The script brims with intelligence and clever
twists, and easily sets the film apart from the
wasteland of Tarantino knockoffs.
It may, however, have too
much of a good thing. Smilovic's hyper-kinetic
imaginings feel more than a little cutesy at
times, such as the decision to make Kingsley's
gangster a Hasidic Jew for no necessary reason,
and then to further pound the originality of this
concept into our heads by way of goons wearing
earlocks and pointless shots of Torah scrolls.
The script also suffers from
a certain unevenness. One minute, Hartnett and Liu
are trading lightning banter in the style of a
1940s screwball comedy, and the next minute
someone is getting shot in the brain. Director
Paul Guigan ("Gangster
No. 1") shows enough talent to make
"Slevin" work, but his direction also
suffers from a "look at me" quality. As
a result, the only overarching tone of
"Slevin Number Seven" that comes
unmistakably through is of a production thoroughly
in love with itself.
The final minutes of the
movie ends with an attempt to wrap its disparate
elements up in a bow, and to add the faintest dash
of emotional resonance to the self-consciously
wacky preceding hour and a half. At that point, it
is just a little too late, because we are already
halfway through with our popcorn and have long ago
resigned ourselves to simply enjoying this fun
thrill ride while it lasts and forgetting about it
fifteen minutes later.
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