Lucky Number Slevin [2006]
Director: Paul McGuigan
Actor: Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci
This was a great movie. Full stop. It’s a difficult movie to say anything about without giving away the ending, and since I’ve been accussed of that before, I’m going to be very careful. The ending is great, mostly because I didn’t see it coming (did I give it away yet?), which means that this film is hardly formulaic. Most movies give away the ending because they follow certain patterns, but this one didn’t. They don’t give away too much information, so you know there’s something coming up, but you don’t know exactly what until that very last moment.
The movie is about a guy named Slevin, who is just in town, looking up a friend. Immediately he gets mistaken for his friend, and dragged to two different crime-bosses, The Boss (Freeman) and The Rabbi (Kingsley), respectively. Apparently his friend had a bunch of gambling debts that Slevin is now supposed to square. He can square it with The Boss by killing The Rabbi’s son – apparently The Boss’ son was murdered only recently, and he suspects his arch-rival The Rabbi behind the attempt. Apparently at one point The Boss and The Rabbi were at one time very close friends and crime-partners, but they had a falling out that left them paranoid and bitter. And amidst all of that there is the strange, enigmatic Smith (Willis), who also goes by the name Mr. Goodkat, a world-famous assassin, seemingly playing both sides of the fence. Oh yeah, and there’s Lindsey (Liu), a tasty and energetic love interest and armchair-detective trying to help Slevin in finding out what the hell is going on.
A great film. The Kansas City Shuffle is da shit, baby!
