Lucky Number Slevin Reviews

Indeed, it must be one of the most disappointing movies I have ever seen. There is a great cast (Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci) and, according to the ratings in IMDB, it is supposed to be some kind of masterpiece (7.8/10). Unfortunately, instead of a masterpiece, it was rather a somewhat convoluted and midly entertaining neo-noir flick. I mean, the directing was decent, all the actors give some decent performances as well but the story was just really far-fetched, with no substance whatsoever. It just goes nowehere and they try to sell it to the audience with some nice shots and fancy dialogs but I didn't buy it. I do believe that the whole thing had some potential and it was not a bad movie but there are far better movies out there with convoluted plots. The point is that before making such an impossible plot, before hand, you need an outline, it has to go somewhere (for example, check 'Usual Suspects' or 'Memento'). This flick is just pure style but style is not enough, I'm afraid. To conclude, if you don't expect a masterpiece like I did, you may end up enjoying more than I did and it still worth a look somehow but it is definitely nothing great.

One of the best movies of all time. No one's life is complete without having seen this masterpiece.

I knew I was going to like this film but not half as much as I actually did. It totally surprised me. I absolutely loved it. It kicks some serious ass which is what I love about some films. It is a very violent film with a lot of blood but it is very realistic in a sexual way especially when Slevin caught his girlfriend having sex with another man. It is a film that you get totally gripped with all the way through. I find it to be a totally amazing film that is just a really cool film as well. This film has a really powerful and unexpected twist that left me reeled in shock. This film now has one of the best ensemble cast of all time in my opinion. I really love all 5 actors within it. Two of them are Oscar winners and the other three are really famous actors with different talents.


Josh Hartnett has yet to disappoint me in any film. He probably isn't the perfect actor to portray Slevin but is the closest to that rank. Hartnett is an actor who is really good at playing hard-hitting characters in hard, aggressive films as well as being a heart throb. He is one of the young actors who I could see earning an Oscar or two in the future. Another actor around that age Heath Ledger is another after earning a posthumous Oscar only for the second time in cinema history for acting. Hartnett has been in very dark films and has played characters that are very cool in my mind. Bruce Willis was awesome as Mr. Goodkat. He reminds me a bit of Léon in the 1994 film Léon: The Professional. Both Willis and Hartnett appeared in Sin City together one year before. Lucy Liu was absolutely brilliant as Lindsey who is a doctor and the girlfriend of Slevin. She is an actress of being in action films such as Kill Bill and Charlie's Angels but her role as Lindsey is a new kind of role for her. I don't think I've ever seen her portray a character like Lindsey before. I think it is the first time that Liu has portrayed such a simple and ordinary modern day character. The two Oscar winners Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley portray two criminals that enemies. Both of their characters names are like names from Sin City: The Boss (Freeman) and The Rabbi (Kingsley). I love both actors and the films they have been in together but they added a lot of awesome realistic moments between the characters.


The director has created a masterpiece in my mind. It is one of the best cult films of the decade or maybe even of all time. The way the characters were named and in some ways of the way it was filmed reminded me quite a bit of Sin City. I know obviously that Lucky Number Slevin isn't in that same kind of colour as Sin City but those reasons that I said about the characters reminded me of Sin City. I would have suggested that this would have been a good film from directors like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez or David Fincher.


Lucky Number Slevin is now in my opinion one of the best films of 2006 and one of the most underrated films of that year as well as of all time. It has a very underrated ensemble cast as well. It isn't the best from any of the cast members but they are all solid performances. It is a film of pure entertainment as well as excellent filmmaking. In my mind, Lucky Number Slevin is a film that you would enjoy time and time again.

''Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest in Monte Carlo and came in third; that's a story.''

A case of mistaken identity lands Slevin into the middle of a war being plotted by two of the city's most rival crime bosses: The Rabbi and The Boss. Slevin is under constant surveillance by relentless Detective Brikowski as well as the infamous assassin Goodkat and finds himself having to hatch his own ingenious plot to get them before they get him.

Josh Hartnett: Slevin Kelevra

Like many stories revolving around killing and revenge, Lucky Number Slevin likes to have everything revealed the further and deeper you descend into it. It's a applaud-able effort in screen writing, plot twists and a puzzle of revelations revealed.



Director Paul McGuigan succeeds in carving out this suspenseful and table turning crime revenger caper. I was expecting a repeat of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, stylish, slick, fun and instead got something completely different, but freshly original and crisp in its execution. The gangster style feels somewhat like Snatch with it's multitude of characters, but is coated with a lot of US styled humour in its writing and performances, making this a bold effort.

''I bet it was that mouth that got you that nose.''

The plot is a well-sketched template, but it is not really apparent until the end of the film, when pieces of the puzzle start falling into place The Usual Suspects style. The only thing you need to know is that unlucky Slevin loses his job and apartment, gets mugged and finds his girlfriend in bed with another man all on the same day. To top it off, he also gets entangled in a mafia-war between two prominent clans respectively headed by the Rabbi (Kingsley) and The Boss (Freeman).

''Ok, I'm under the impression that you're under the impression that I owe you 96,000 dollars.''

The two latter heavyweight actors chip in enormously in Lucky Number Slevin, and when they are finally faced together in a long-drawn out shot, and their different screen presences are juxtaposed, it is a scene so extremely powerful and engrossing that you want to obliterate Josh Hartnett just for getting in the way. Casting him as the lead character was overall just a bad move by McGuigan because he is too random in quality for an otherwise intelligent film.
The core of Slevin, however, is it's superb script. Funny, witty and as sharp as a Samurai Sword. Every single word and phrase is strategically placed for maximum assault on us the viewers, whether that be with its dry wit or sardonic mutterings throughout, or even the moments in which it harks back to archetypes and conventions of crime scenarios from previous attempts. The script and its dialogue provide nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it does an exceptional job of developing characters, tear away any feeling of apathy one may initially have toward the primary protagonists, creating the plot's undercurrents and providing the dark comedic aspect that the movie is built upon.

Lucky Number Slevin looked good and sounded awesome and viewing Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu and Bruce Willis fire up proceedings is always going be entertaining. To conclude this is a fun black comedy film and if you're looking to escape reality for a short period there are worse things available. If you're looking for an intelligent twister and well written conceived mob film there are better ones than this movie.

''I was thinking that if you're still alive when I get back from work tonight... maybe we could go out to dinner or something?''

I had to shut this one off about half way. I'm baffled how people can dare compare this to 'Usual Suspects' or 'Two Smoking Guns'. The only thing in common is violent deaths and gangster related plot. The acting (or lack thereof) of Hartnett hasn't been this bad since 'Pearl Harbor', and Lucy Liu, well she still can't act if her life depended on it.

If a movie blows two aspects, acting and plot, before the first half is over, I have to shut it off. If rest of movie finally got good, my apologies. I did hear the ending was absolutely amazing, but to me, a movie can't be good with just great start (it was) and great ending, if the 90% in between is complete crap.

The problem with Hartnett's acting was the complete idiocy of his lines. If you're being summoned to a gangster boss's mansion and he suspects you stole $96,000 of his money, why would you make 5th grade jokes towards him?

Boss: They call him the fairy.
Slevin: What do you mean?
Boss: Because he is a fairy.
Slevin: You mean with wings, flying around in the forest? (said with big smirk on his face)
Boss: No, because he's a homosexual.

How completely retarded.

And the plot??

Come on. A black boss feuding with a Rabbi? They each have apartment building right across street, and plan to kill each other? They each get an idiotic Hartnett to go kill the other guy? There may be huge twists and unexpected endings, but if you start with an asinine plot that is as loose as Paris Hilton, you can take and twist the plot any which way and still make it fit original plot. That's not clever writing; that's just setting plot expectations so low at the beginning that anything will shock you by the end.

If you like cool gangster movies with plot twists and suprising endings, this is for you. Reminded me of "usual suspects" and "two smoking guns".