Lucky Number Slevin

This is the second film star Josh Hartnett and director Paul McGuigan have made together. McGuigan, who broke on to the scene in Britain with the stylish dark comedy Gangster #1, made his American debut with a Chicago-set thriller named Wicker Park that no one, myself included, bothered to see. Lucky Number Slevin hopefully marks the end of the Hartnett-McGuigan collaborative efforts, not only because it is a bad film but because star and director seem perplexed, at times making totally different movies.

McGuigan's trying to turn in a mix between David Mamet, Tony Scott and Guy Ritchie, a sexy violent comedy-drama playing around with gangster movie cliches. Hartnett's performance just doesn't make any sense at all in this context. At first, his behavior just seems out of character. After a while, though, he actually begins to violate the entire concept behind the movie. He forgets he's playing the patsy in a "mistaken identity" thriller and starts to act like he's the heavy in a mean-spirited revenge film. Like a lot of story elements throughout Lucky Number Slevin, it makes no sense.



But I am getting ahead of myself. Hartnett's confused and confusing performance is a big problem, but not really the film's biggest problem. Really, I think two things just kill any chance Lucky Number Sleven would have as a viable piece of entertainment within the first 10 minutes:

(1) The script by Jason Smilovic is not particularly clever yet seems to find itself intensely clever.

We open with the mysterious Mr. Goodkat (a barely-there Bruce Willis) telling a story about a con known as the "Kansas City Shuffle." Now, all the "Kansas City Shuffle" really refers to is misdirection. Make a guy look one way, you look the other way.

Now, that is not exciting or insightful. Okay, any movie about any kind of con is going to, in some way, include misdirection. In fact, any kind of movie involving even a magic trick will involve misdirection. That's how you fool people, by making them look away at the crucial moment. Duh.

The movie, however, seems to treat Willis' insight as if it's the Holy Grail of all Criminal Insights. Smilovic's narrative is well-structured enough. He knows where the cool little flourishes and snappy bits of dialogue ought to go. He just can't actually come up with any. The dialogue reminded me of "Dawson's Creek." People talk fast and they seem to be "quipping" or doing some kind of repartee, but if you actually listen to their comments, nothing is particularly funny or droll. The best Smilovic can come up with in terms of clever little noir-isms is when Hartnett refers to a policeman on the beat as a "pigtail." Get it? A pig who's tailing him! Har!

Beyond just the quality of the writing, all of the details Smilovic has clearly included to make the movie memorable and fun just fall totally flat. The whole movie has an out-of-step, tone deaf feel to it, as if writer and director and actors just couldn't get together on what story they wanted to tell. Because the films various "bits" are not funny, and therefore don't work as jokes, they only serve to remove any sort of intensity or believability from the film's central narrative. Rather than an anarchic, zany good time, he's authored a grim, mean-spirited pseudo-noir that's burdened by a reliance on ludicrous cartoon logic. Which brings me to...

(2) The film hopes to get by on creativity while ignoring common sense.

Again, if the movie were funny, I'd be willing to overlook the fact that it's stupid and, eventually, completely pointless. But it's not funny. Strange, yes. Hard to believe, sure. But not funny.

Slevin (Hartnett) arrives at Nick's New York apartment to find his old friend inexplicably missing. Next door neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Liu) hasn't seen him in a few days. As it turns out, Nick's being pursued by not one but two different yet equally powerful underworld figures. The Boss (Morgan Freeman) and The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) once were partners, but have since become enemies. Now, they occupy two identical buildings located on opposite sides of the same street, afraid to leave their penthouse enclaves for fear of what the other will do to them.

See what I mean about cartoon logic? In a hilarious satire of crime films, perhaps an audience could buy this scenario, with two crime lords facing one another across a street, terrified to move beyond the safety of their bullet-proof windows. But it's hard to take that situation seriously at face value. These two guys don't come off as imposing. They come off as wimps. A real tough guy crime boss would just send his goons across the street to take everyone out.

Anyway, both The Boss and The Rabbi think Slevin is Nick, and because Nick owes them money, therefore Slevin owes them money. He becomes an unwilling pawn in this somewhat deadly game of cat and mouse, all the while trying to solve the mystery of Nick's disappearance with the help of the chatty, ditzy Lindsey.

It's not funny, but I think it was supposed to be. Lots of scenes feature "banter," dialogue that exists for no other reason than to entertain but which generally doesn't make a lot of sense. For example, Freeman has a long monologue in his first scene about an old comic strip character named The Shmoo. Here's part of his actual speech, taken from an old description of the Shmoo from a Lil Abner comic:

The Shmoo first appeared in the strip in August 1948. According to Shmoo legend, the lovable creature laid eggs, gave milk and died of sheer esctasy when looked at with hunger. The Shmoo loved to be eaten and tasted like any food desired. Anything that delighted people delighted a Shmoo. Fry a Shmoo and it came out chicken. Broil it and it came out steak. Shmoo eyes made terrific suspender buttons. The hide of the Shmoo if cut thin made fine leather and if cut thick made the best lumber. Shmoo whiskers made splendid toothpicks. The Shmoo satisfied all the world's wants. You could never run out of Shmoon (plural of Shmoo) because they multiplied at such an incredible rate.

I'm guessing this is Smilovic's attempt to imitate Quentin Tarantino. A tough guy makes an abstract analogy to an old comic strip. That kind of mashing together of nerdy underground culture and gritty revenge film theatrics obviously recalls movies like Pulp Fiction or True Romance. Tarantino will sometimes throw in a cultural reference just for kicks (as in his added scene in Crimson Tide where Denzel discusses Silver Surfer comics with his men), but if he's writing an entire speech about some old character, there's probably a reason. Some kind of connection to what's really going on.

Now, I have thought about this for probably longer than I should, and I can't tell why the hell The Boss would be talking about The Shmoo. It makes no goddamn sense at all. If it were really funny, I would give it a pass. But it's not funny at all. Mainly, he's just quoting the original text description of The Shmoo from the comic book itself. Later on, Slevin will bring up the topic again, recalling the reference as if it now has significance in the story. But what significance does it have? How did this make it into the movie?

There's lots of incidental information like this, details that are thrown out but have no relevance to the main story and are entirely inscrutible. Early discussions about a horse race from 20 years before so clearly telescope the film's climax that I genuinely can't believe a veteran of several previous films like McGuigan didn't realize this during editing. Veteran actors like Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and Stanley Tucci are shockingly wasted in dull, drab parts that are entirely beneath them. In fact, Lucy Liu's character is here only to provide a last-second twist switcheroo that might work as a cheap surprise if it were not so completely impossible.

SPOILER ALERT: I'm pretty much done the non-spoiler section of this review. Don't bother seeing this movie, it's lame. However, if you have already seen the movie, you may continue reading the part where I talk about what happens at the end.

In fact, the entire final 20 minutes of the movie makes no sense. It's not overly complicated, just in violation of all that we have seen in the opening hour of the film. We see Josh Hartnett's girlfriend cheating on him. We see him get on a plane to New York. We see him call his friend Nick and announce his intentions to stay with him for a while.

But then at the end of the film, it appears that the entire adventure has been a set-up, planned by Hartnett, from the very beginning. So he planned to find his girlfriend cheating on him? How did he do that? And why would he "call" his friend Nick? He doesn't really have a friend Nick! That's the whole idea at the end. So, I guess that scene didn't really happen? McGuigan's just showing us BS that's not real to keep us guessing? That's not actually a good way to build up any suspense. It's just a formula for making people feel cheated.

As for the Lucy Liu stuff, that's even more ridiculous. Even if you got her in a bulletproof vest on the right day that she was going to get shot, how could you be sure the killer wouldn't shoot her in the head? And how did they manage to achieve realistic blood spray? She had squibs set up with fake blood, ready to go, and just walked around like that the whole day? I mean, why even include this scene if you can't come up with a way to make it work?

END SPOILERS

Anyway, this one's pretty much a disaster from beginning to end. One of those movies that obviously just didn't click, but because everyone had already cashed those advance checks, the project just developed its own momentum. Better luck next time, McGuigan. Only, maybe forget about the Hartnett collaborations next time. He's just not up to it.