Lucky Number Slevin
Studio: The Weinstein Company
Rated: R
Website: http://www.slevin-movie.com/
Release Date: 2006-04-07
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu, Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman
Director: Paul McGuigan
Screenwriter: Jason Smilovic
WorkNameSort: Lucky Number Slevin
Our Rating: 1.50
The Tarantino school of filmmaking reaches its nadir – one hopes – in this initially promising mistaken-identity caper, which ends up cooking its own goose through a devotion to glibness above all. As a self-professed innocent who gets caught up in a web of organized crime and bitter rivalries, star Josh Hartnett gets to trade rapid-fire bons mots with an unbearable Lucy Liu (much of it while running around in a bath towel that unfortunately exposes his weirdly shaped body). An all-star cast that includes Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley is wasted on a cutesy-poo crime story that confuses bad dialogue with postmodernism and takes forever to get anywhere – including the climactic plot "twist," which reasonably astute viewers will have seen coming after the first 20 minutes.
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2006.