"What's a Kansas City Shuffle?”
We rented Lucky Number Slevin because a large chunk of our friends told us it was a great movie. I wouldn’t say it was a great movie, but it was a fun hour and a half.
Josh Harnett is Slevin Kelevra. He’s on a trip to NewYork to see a friend, and on the way to his friend’s apartment he’s mugged. That is pretty much just a bad start to a really bad weekend for Slevin. His friend is gone and Slevin is mistaken for him by a couple of very irritated mobsters. It wouldn’t be a problem except that his pal owes a mob boss a whole lot of cash, and of course Slevin can’t pay it. To keep his life, Slevin is coerced into an agreement to kill the rival mob boss’s gay son. Mayhem ensues while the cops get involved and Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis) starts playing both sides of the mob.
The dialog is snappy and there are plenty of twists and turns in the plot to keep you guessing on who is screwing over whom. Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu play with the dialog quite well, bouncing lines off of each other like the old black and whites with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. (I’m not saying they are on par with those two, but the feeling is similar.) The characters are larger than life and suit the plot. What I can’t figure out is why the characters keep eating sandwiches. Maybe if I had listened to the commentary, I would know why.
It’s a clever film, but it wasn’t as clever as some like the snappy dialog in Quentin Tarantino films. It’s a fun ride with equal parts gun play, romance, and chemistry. If you like that sort of thing, think a little darker version of The Whole Nine Yards, you’ll like Lucky Number Slevin.
Rating: 4 ½ Purrs
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