Underrated Things: Lucky Number Slevin
One of the few rewards of the much-maligned visa run (which I’ll write about later) is that maybe you’ll get to see a not-bad movie on the bus ride to the hell-hole that is the border with Cambodia. I found myself stuck on one of these runs a while back and saw a movie that made me wonder just how the hell I missed it during its theatrical run. The movie was Lucky Number Slevin, an incredibly smart, stylish, funny, violent flick with one hell of a cast - Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci, and more. It suffered from middling reviews when it first came out, but I say bah! to that - check it out.
The plot concerns a young slacker named Slevin (Hartnett) who gets confused with another young slacker, who happens to be mixed up with two competeing mafia bosses (Freeman and Kinglsey). The whole movie essentially follows Slevin as he gets drawn into the conflict. Although the movie only has 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, it scores 78% on IMDb.
Lucy Liu and Josh Hartnett in Slevin
Many dismiss it simply as an attempt at Pulp Fiction-style hipness, but I think that’s a mistake. While many of the directorial elements are similar (not to mention the style of dialogue), the plost is much more complex. Where Pulp Fiction merely put its acts out of order, Slevin plays more like a classic mystery, with multiple plot lines and mysterious characters who aren’t all they appear to be. It also has one hell of a twist at the end; the kind where you could easily go back and watch it again, going “Ahhh, I see what they did there!” every few minutes; indeed, the script is dense and multi-layered - much more than a simple crime story. It also has some of most interestingly designed sets I’ve ever seen - funky, super fly wallpaper adorns nearly every background and earthy brown tones seem to be the only palette that set-dec bothered with, giving each scene a sense of… well, not sure really, but it sure does look cool. Definitely worth checking out.
A shirtless Harnett is a runnign gag in the film... but you kind of have to see it to get why
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