Film Reviews

Lucky Number Slevin

• Rating:
• Director: Paul McGuigan
• Starring: Bruce Willis
• Details: US, 100mins, 15s.

Slevin (Hartnett) is having a bad day - he gets fired from his job, finds that his apartment building is to be condemned, and walks in on his girlfriend in bed with someone else. To put all this behind him, Slevin takes off for New York to stay with an old buddy but upon arrival he gets mugged and is threatened by a couple of gangsters who believe he is owes their boss (Freeman) money. His protests of mistaken identity fall on deaf ears and Slevin is forced to take a 'job' - whacking the son of The Rabbi (Kinglsey), Freeman's sworn enemy - but before he gets a chance to put a plan into motion, he is kidnapped by The Rabbi's men and told that he owes them money too and must make amends! Behind the scenes, malevolent hitman Goodcat (Willis) is really pulling the strings, and Slevin turns to sexy coroner and budding Colombo-type (Lucy Liu) to find out what the hell is going on before the police, led by an uneasy detective (Stanley Tucci), catch up with him.
The fact that all the above happens in the first half-hour shows the breakneck speed Lucky Number Slevin travels at. With subplots shooting off in different directions like an agitated octopus, this quirky noir-ish tale boasts wisecracks and one-liners in its first half that would make Dashiel Hammet et al proud. However, at the half-way point, everything - character, theme and plot - does a handstand and continues down a different and darker road no one envisaged at the outset. This proves a problem for director McGuigan, as he tries to staple together a script of two stories and is left with a ringer. The ripostes lose steam as McGuigan settles down to a more serious tone, and Lucky Number Slevin suffers as a result. But Hartnett can confidently put to rest any ghosts than have haunted him since 40 days And 40 Nights and Pearl Harbour, as he assuredly reinvents himself, quipping his way into the hard-boiled detective's notebook.

Review by Gavin Burke