No matter how bad your day may seem, Slevin can top it.
Slevin (Josh Hartnett) is the protagonist of Paul McGuigan’s twisting and twisted little crime drama, Lucky Number Slevin.
On the same day Slevin loses his job, he catches his wife cheating on him, so he zips off to New York to stay with an old buddy.
On his way to the guy’s apartment, Slevin is mugged and left with no identification to prove he isn’t his friend, who has coincidentally run up a major debt with a crime lord known as The Boss (Morgan Freeman).
To pay off the marker, Slevin has to assassinate the gay son of another crime lord known as The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) or forfeit his own life.
Slevin’s every move is being scrutinized by the notorious hitman Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis) and Detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci).
The one bright light in this darkest of days is Lindsey (Lucy Lui), the pathologist in the next apartment.
While everyone else seems to want Slevin on one side of a bullet, Lindsey just wants romance.
Lucky Number Slevin is Hartnett’s movie and he makes the most of every scene.
Willis is all moody and brooding.
Freeman is suave but equally menacing, and Kingsley lets The Rabbi hover on the edge of madness.
The motives and methods of Tucci’s policeman signal as much danger from the good guys as the bad.
The characters all have so many ulterior motives it’s a case of trying to strip away their masks before the screenplay does.
Amateur sleuths are in for a treat.
(This film is rated 18A)
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