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 Josh Hartnett and Morgan Freeman play cat and mouse in the comic crime thriller Lucky Number Slevin. It arrives today on DVD. |
Fonzie would likely disagree, but you can have too much cool.
Case in point: Lucky Number Slevin, a comic-crime thriller manufactured from Pulp Fiction's DNA, that oozes cool -- self-aware, smug wannabe cool -- from every pore of its wallpaper.
Yes, here is a movie that stars Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and Bruce Willis, yet what I remember most are the oodles of wallpaper slathering the sets.
Never a good sign.
Another hint of trouble?
The title itself -- a meaningless pun on the name of the character played by Josh Hartnett, an everyman suffering from a case of mistaken identity.
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Suffering, I say, because this particular -- and potentially lethal -- episode of crossed signals brings him into contact with warring mob bosses played by Freeman and Kingsley, respectively, both of whom have schemes in which Slevin eventually becomes entangled. Add to this, Willis as a mysterious assassin with a secretive agenda and Lucy Liu as a chit-chatty coroner -- who also happens to be the neighbour of the guy Hartnett is mistaken for (got that?) -- and you have the film Pulp Fiction might have been in lesser hands.
Granted, Slevin has its pleasures -- particularly the ping-pong dialogue between Hartnett or Freeman -- but after an hour of zigs and zags and then more zigs, you wish screenwriter Jason Smilovic and director Paul McGuigan had paid as nearly as much attention to the characters as their production designer did to the set decoration.
All the showy banter and "Aren't-we-clever-filmmakers?" preening can't compensate for the fact that, without genuine emotional investment in the people on screen and their plights, even the most cleverly-executed of goings-on ring hollow. (This is made all the worse by a major, if not unexpected, twist in the latter part of the story which, while I won't spoil here, should be obvious to any amateur armchair detective.) Speaking of hollow, as in wooden, it's no surprise Hartnett is out of his depth amid the star-studded cast. That said, though, he does a serviceable job shouldering the plot-heavy proceedings as everyone else around him gobbles the scenery so ferociously you have to wonder what all that wallpaper was made of.
EXTRAS: Director's audio commentary from McGuigan, while Hartnett, Liu and Smilovic provide a second commentary. As well, four deleted scenes, an alternative endings, trailer and a making-of featurette.
LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN
STARS: Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and Bruce Willis
DIRECTED BY: Paul McGuigan
IN BRIEF: Tongue-in-cheek thriller about a man (Hartnett) with a potentially terminal case of mistaken identity.
RATING: 2 out of 5