After spending most of yesterday at work writing a report to calculate the average tonnage of waffles consumed over a selectable period, I thought, for a change we rent out a film. However, this is not an exercise I look forward since wifey and I can never decide on what to get from the local Blockbuster. I usually pick something that’s violent whilst my better half picks a romcom or some true life heart rendering crap, but to my surprise, we managed to agree on Lucky Number Slevin, and what a cracking choice it was.
The premise is pretty simple:
A case of mistaken identity lands Slevin (Josh Hartnett) into the middle of a war being plotted by two of the city’s most rival crime bosses: The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman). Slevin is under constant surveillance by relentless Detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci) as well as the infamous assassin Goodkat (Bruce Willis) and finds himself having to hatch his own ingenious plot to get them before they get him.
The first 20 minutes are complete wtf territory whilst your brain tries to glue together the pieces, but once over that hump it flows pretty well. There’s plenty of twists and turns and due to my waffle overloaded state I didn’t “get it” until about 10 minutes from the end. On the IMDB comments there is a comparison with Snatch, which I can see. There’s the whole gangsters with attitude thing going on and sometimes quick exchanges of dialogue but it hasn’t got that Brit grit edge that Snatch has but it’s more the highly stylised sets that work here instead (I mean, what is with the choice of wallpaper?!).
As you can see from the plot overview, there’s a top cast, but there is one omission, Lucy Liu, who puts in an excellent turn as a fairly dizzy free spirit who tries to help Slevin with his predicament. Harnett, Willis and Sir Ben all put in good performances whilst Morgan Freeman is perhaps a little unconvincing as a hardman, but his charm makes up for it.
I can’t really say much more without giving the story away, other than, it’s highly recommended.
