Hate him or love him, Quentin Tarantino changed movies forever with his pages of dialogue laden with movie references, ensemble cast of famous actors, mazelike narrative twists and bloodbaths. Lucky Number Slevin isn’t a Tarantino film, but it wants to be badly; however it is too predictable and self-conscious to hit the homage switch and lands heavily on shameless imitation.
Lucky Number Slevin features Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci and Josh Hartnett. There are also brief cameos by Parenthood’s Sam Jaeger, Danny Aiello, Robert Forster, Corey Stoll and Forest Gump’s Mykelti Williamson (Bubba). If the character is not involved in illegal shenanigans, then the character is in law enforcement. I’m not sure when the universe agreed that Hartnett fit into this tableau, but it happened and now we’re stuck with it, which leads to predictable plot twists that fans of the genre such as myself could see coming a mile away.
Lucky Number Slevin feels like someone took the wrong lessons from some joke about a black guy and a Rabbi walking into a bar then decided to make a movie from it while feeling sly about the opportunity to hide the hack joke in the open. There is even a character called The Fairy because, wait for it, he is gay. Is it still outré if this is the entire movie? When someone is saying something important, the character practically announces it: the “Kansas City Shuffle,” “The Shmoo” and “I’m Not Nick.” The film is not clever. It is tedious albeit well executed. I wonder if Goodkat is a good cat (slang)….hmmmmm. Is it a coincidence that all the bad guys are minorities, and all the good guys are not?
I also hate mistaken identity scenarios. They make me itch, especially in a world where everyone is instantly recognizable by technology. I know that no one really buys into this part of the narrative, but since it is a dominant theme, I found it extremely annoying. Lucky Number Slevin unforgivably drags towards the middle and ultimately deserves no kudos for wasting Liu. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. She usually is introduced as the girl then is revealed to be a bad ass, sinister chick, but nope, she is just a love interest. If you are really committed to Tarantino films, she needs to brandish a gun too.
In the interest of transparency, I think that I mistakenly put Lucky Number Slevin in my queue believing it to be Smokin’ Aces and kept wondering when Alicia Keys was going to appear. Side note: I own no Keys music, but I was curious if she could convincingly play a kick ass assassin. I can be tricked into watching anything if I’m promised a lethal woman. If you’re a fan of the cast and have a high tolerance for Tarantino ripoffs, definitely check out Lucky Number Slevin otherwise skip it.