Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

Lucky Number Slevin is worked with great craft. It's a lot of good acting, it's a great plot and it's all pretty much wrapped up nicely. After deciding on my rating, I went by my IMDB page to discover it's exactly the same as I gave the first time I watched it. Whenever an eight or better holds up the second time around they've done a lot correct.

The first third of the movie have minor issues. It's about how they present the entire story, the angle they pitch it from and the feeling you get watching. It's like an obvious tease. You can spot the direction it'll take, you can guess well on what's about to happen and there's some minor scenes were the entire balance between the movie's intentions and the feel you get, is a bit off. As it turns out they're just getting warmed up. In the final two thirds it's a lot more focused on what they're trying to tell, which scenes should be shot and such. You can forgive the first part, but in the end when you reflect on the movie it's still the same parts being half the reason you can't speak of it amongst the all time greats.

There's another reason as well, but then we'll be far into the plot, and I don't think it's wise to go spoilerish in reviews. Let's just rather focus on something completely different. It's a big surprise to me Jason Smilovic, who wrote this movie, haven't turned up with another movie. He's created several TV-shows without much success so far as no-one have got a second season yet, but the debut movie should hopefully bring him back into the big screen genre sooner rather than later. While the movie borrows and steals from classics, it's still done classy within its own universe. There's nothing wrong being inspired by the greats, as long as you find your own way delivering in the end.

Overall it's a highly enjoyable movie, even the second time around. It was a whisper of bigger things to come from Josh Hartnett, whom I for a long time only though of as just another pretty boy. Bruce Willis is doing a crossover between his characters from Die Hard, Last Man Standing and a couple of others, but it's these kind of characters Willis has made a career on. Freeman, Kingsley, Liu and Tucci are mostly all in there delivering. It's not Freeman's finest hour, but to be honest few have to compete with them self as difficult while talking about their own finest hours. The other three was doing very well. And the director and actors had a great script to work from. It's the biggest thing about this movie. After watching it you know it went a lot of work into the script. The balance of the story isn't 100 %, but it's close enough you salute the writer.