Movie Review: Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci
Directed by: Paul McGuigan
Like director Paul McGuigan's last film, Wicker Park, Lucky Number Slevin is little more than an empty exercise in style. This time, however, the offense is even greater, because it's not even his own empty style on display. It's Quentin Tarentino's style, with a little Guy Ritchie thrown in. The whole thing plays as though McGuigan and screenwriter Jason Smilovic got together one weekend, watched Pulp Fiction, Snatch, The Usual Suspects, and The Big Lebowski, and decided to cram all those flicks into a movie. Compounding matters, the film itself self-references how it is similar to Hitchcock's North by Northwest. It's like it even knows there's nothing original to be had in this movie-going experience.
Its complete lack of originality isn't even its worst trait. There's a lot of unoriginal movies that can still manage to be fun. Lucky Number Slevin is not one of those movies. Instead, it's one of those movies that tries to be oh-so-clever at every turn, be it the quirky characters without names that populate it ("The Boss", "The Rabbi", "Mr. Goodkat", "The Fairy", "Elvis", "Sloe"), the designer apartments that everyone can afford to live in, and, worst of all, the smirking, knowing, post-modern, ironic dialogue that everyone speaks in that in no way replicates the patterns of human speech. Yes, a lot of movies feature snappy dialogue that is better than the way most people speak. It's fun. But, this movie stretches it to ridiculous lengths, in situations where no one, not even these stupid characters, would speak like that. It's nothing more than the writer showing off how quirky he is, and I found it to be exhausting. "Look at me! Look at all the interesting things about pop culture I can make people say! Look at the wise ass cracks our fish-out-of-water hero says to thugs threatening to kill him!"
Perhaps too-clever-by-half dialogue would be fine, if the plotting wasn't so obvious and weak. The film begins with an overly long introductory sequence that pretends to be little more than an establishing piece for Bruce Willis' character. But, since the introduction is so long and the film's style is so familiar, we know it will be significant to the plot, as it is obviously one of those flicks where everything will tie together in the end. So right away, from the first fifteen minutes, a halfway observant viewer will clue into two major "twists" that the movie will try to shock us with later. I'll admit that I didn't figure out all the twists before they were revealed (in a painfully dull and awkward sequence of exposition that stands in place of a real climax), but I suspect that has more to do with the fact that I stopped caring about the movie after an hour, and not because the movie was particularly clever with its ideas.
As far as the acting goes, Josh Hartnett manages to give the film some charisma, rising above the mediocrity he is given to work with. While Lucy Liu has some charm as the girl next door, sadly, her character is the worst example of everything wrong with the movie, as she is clearly the kind of character that only exists in the minds of lonely screenwriters. No woman on Earth would act and react as she does. Morgan Freeman gives a standard, albeit uninspired, performance as one of the film's heavies, Bruce Willis is doing his standard, squinty-eyed stoic character, and Ben Kingsley awkwardly chews scenery while hamming it up with his, admittedly, terrible dialogue (the absolute worst part of the movie comes near the end where he's forced to deliver a groan-worthy soliloquy, that, again, would never be uttered by anyone, anytime, ever).
So, if you're looking for a Tarentino-esque flick with some snappy patter, quirky characters, plot twists, and gore, then... rent True Romance. Don't watch this movie. It makes True Romance look like Pulp Fiction. It's that bad. If you do watch this movie, well, don't say I didn't warn you.
1.5/5
Related:
Confidence (2003)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Wicker Park (2004)