REVIEWS
LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN
“Director: Paul McGuigan; Writer: Jason Smilovic; Starring: Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu
Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley ”
review written by David G. Stone
It seems to be a general rule that when a slew of great acting talent comes together to work on one project that something is going to go wrong; there is always an exception to the rule though, and the not this not too serious crime story fits the bill.
It all began with a horse race twenty years ago – a fixed race – in which the steroids got to be too much for a horse before it made it to the line. When a new boss moved into town things got ugly for those who didn’t have the money to back up their bets.
Fast forward to the present and we meet Slevin (Josh Hartnett), likely the unluckiest man on earth – his girlfriend dumped him, he got mugged, and he got evicted on the same day – just as the charismatic Lindsey (Lucy Liu) walks in on him toweling off from the shower.
When Slevin is mistaken for Nick Fisher (Sam Jaeger), the friend whose apartment he is staying in, he is taken to meet The Boss (Morgan Freeman) in order to pay off a debt he isn’t responsible for. Slevin gets out of the debt though in exchange for doing The Boss a favor: kill the son of his arch-nemesis, fellow crime lord The Rabbi (Sir Ben Kingsley), who also approaches him for money that Nick Fisher owes, in retaliation for the assassination of his own son.
After a twenty year feud between the two crime bosses in which neither one has left his home – both lavish New Jersey penthouses – and now that lines have been crossed the two independently decide to bring in the same outside help to handle the situation in Mr. Goodcat (Bruce Willis), a notorious hit-man who has not operated in the Jersey area in decades.
Watching a great actor like Sir Ben Kingsley portray a morally conflicted rabbi/crimelord who reads the Torah in the same office he hides a shotgun under his desk and witnessing Morgan Freeman as The Boss who seems to have never left the seventies are more than enough reasons to see Slevin. Lucy Liu shows a whole other side of herself as Slevin’s love interest and wannabe private detective, and Josh Hartnett is simply surprising as he nails everything right as the enigmatic Slevin who seems to be playing his own game all along.
The plot becomes predictable midway through the movie, but the eccentricity of the twists and the characters are what really make up this film penned by Jason Smilovic, creator of ABC’s one time hit Karen Sisco and NBC’s upcoming drama Kidnapped.
Slevin may not be perfect, but it’s obvious that the talented artists behind this film were having fun making it, and the product is a smart, quick paced, witty crime story that’s a good alternative to the typical April turnouts.
