What style--and what a lack of substance(Originally published 2006)
The new Paul McGuigan movie, "Lucky Number Slevin," is a violent, diverting stunt headlined by an A-list cast. So right away it's on intoxicating, shaky ground. It comes recommended for those in the mood to leave logic outside the theater and just ride with a movie that exists solely to employ an endless stream of contrivances and complications.
All others should forget it.
Based on Jason Smilovic's restless script, the film is nothing more than style over substance. But what style--and what a lack of substance. More than any other movie since "Casino," here is a film in which the wallpaper should have received a credit (I looked, but didn't catch one--so, we'll leave it to Suzanne Cloutier and Normand Robitaille's post-modern noir set design, which is one of the movie's best assets).
Every room and every hallway in "Slevin" is papered with such intricate patterns, you don't have to be the freshest flower in the arrangement to get McGuigan's drift. His is a movie in which patterns increasingly fold in on themselves, with his characters--all of whom enjoy endless bouts of double-talk and double-entendres, the likes of which only could spring from a screenwriter's head, which gets to the film's self-conscious underpinnings--blending inward until there ceases to be a meaningful center. It's due to the strength of the acting, which is excellent, and the peculiar situations that the movie is as entertaining as it is.
In its most streamlined form, this dense, jittery film stars Josh Hartnett as Slevin, a young man who arrives at the apartment of his friend, Nick Fisher, just when the timing couldn't be worse. Fisher, it turns out, is a compulsive gambler whose debts are about to be called in by the crimelord, The Boss (Morgan Freeman), whose henchmen are sent to collect Fisher when instead they find Slevin.
It's a simple case of mistaken identity, but nobody here cares. With haste, Slevin is taken to The Boss, who lives in a decadent Manhattan penthouse and who quickly cuts him a deal: Kill the gay son of his arch nemesis, The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley), who lives directly across from The Boss and who once killed The Boss' son, and they will be square with the money. Seeing no way out, Slevin agrees.
Bruce Willis is the international assassin who ads dice to the movie. Stanley Tucci and Danny Aiello also show up, as does the indefatigable Lucy Liu as Slevin's quirky love interest; she's terrific. Railing through the movie are hints of "The Usual Suspects," "Pulp Fiction," "Sin City" and "North by Northwest," the latter of which is referenced at length in a critical scene. While McGuigan is no Hitchcock or Tarantino--you sense he'd rather like to be, and who can blame him?--his latest is a vast improvement over his last film, the awful "Wicker Park." That movie also starred Hartnett, who joins McGuigan in being very good here. In fact, it's by far the best either has ever been.
Grade: B
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