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Health & Fitness

Lucky Number slevin

Review of the hip caper film.

 

Lucky Number Slevin Review
Ever really wished you had the right words for any situation? Ever thought of something to say right after an argument was over? Well, this movie has painstakingly collected all of these bon mots and ripostes, and crammed every one of them into 110 minutes.
It’s not nearly as cool as it sounds.“Lucky Number Slevin” features a great cast and Josh Hartnett, full of recognizeable faces like Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu, and Stanley Tucci. And while it offers some good twists, suspenseful shootouts, and great acting, it does tend to get very repetitive. The plot consists mainly of bad things happening to Slevin, Slevin making an obnoxious remark, and then Slevin getting beat up by someone. Kind of like if you were to get Quentin Tarantino to direct a WWE wrestling movie. 
           The movie starts with Bruce Willis in a wheelchair, telling a story to a very nondescript man at a bus stop. In the story, a young man tries to rig a horse race, so that a horse, one named “Lucky Number Slevin,” will win, and allow the man to send his son to college. Geez, man, you need to pick better places to invest. Like the lottery. I'm just a lucky number away from becoming the next billionaire! Well, things don’t go so well for this race-rigging man. The mob finds out, kills the horse, and then whacks the guy and his family. Well, that’s a nice story. Good thing that will DEFINITELY NOT COME BACK TO HAUNT US AT THE END. Bruce Willis, who we then find out is named Goodkat, kills the man he’s telling the story to, dumps him in the wheelchair, and disappears like mist in a firestorm.            
We then cut to Slevin, played by Josh Hartnett. In this movie, he plays a thick-skulled, emotionless, Neanderthalic man. Surprised yet?Slevin has lost his job, his house, his girlfriend, and his wallet, which was stolen from him. So he goes to NYC to visit his friend Nick Fisher.  But when he reaches Nick’s apartment, his friend isn’t there. The mafia, however, is. Apparently, Nick Fisher owes $96,000 to a mysterious individual named “The Boss.” He also owes $33,000 to the Boss’s arch rival, a Hassidic Jew crime lord by the name of “The Rabbi.”
Both men hate each other, and each has a special job for Slevin. The Boss wants Slevin to kill the Rabbi’s son. The Rabbi wants Slevin to come up with the money in three days. And as if this isn’t bad enough, the police soon zero in on our protagonist, blaming him for illegal mob activities. However, with the help of Nick’s next-door neighbor, he discovers that the enigmatic Mr. Goodkat (sounds like a candy bar) is running the show. Can Slevin escape with his life?
            Smug, smart, and suspenseful, “Lucky Number Slevin” has all the makings of a masterpiece. However, it needed some variety. The one-liners, while funny at first, become quite annoying by the film's end. The twist was well done, but the last 15 minutes are so laden with twists, they start to become predictable. And Josh Hartnett needs to go back to hunting mammoths somewhere and painting cave walls. These attributes have earned the movie the nickname I’ve bestowed: “Usual Suspects Light.”It has its moments. If you like crime thrillers, this one might be fun. Just don’t walk in expecting the next “Pulp Fiction.” (8/10)  
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