Lucky Number Slevin

Lucky Number Slevin (2006)

Directed by: Paul McGuigan
Written by: Jason Smilovic
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley

A really compictaed revenge movie about a guy who calls himself Slevin that gets involved with two warring gangs. But not. It's kind of difficult to say anything about the plot without giving away the whole damn thing. It's that kind of a movie.

It's very complicated - more so than necessary, I would say, but a lot of people love that kind of thing. I find it a little frustrating. It's an obvious case of the writer thinking (or knowing, wihch may unfortunately be true in my case) that they are smarter than the audience. You can tell by the dialogue. It's all very witty.

It's okay for something to be witty. I rather like movies to have some wit to them (they're a hell of a lot better than those stupid movies), but this kind of sacrifices wit for character. All of the people talked the same way. I hate it when I notice that kind of thing. It's not subtle at all. I sit there wondering how someone came up with something that witty on the spot. It's because they didn't. It's because some writer had been thinking about that for a while.

And the overly complicated plot is another sign of the writer's astounding intellect. Only he could really know what's going on. The viewer is supposed to sit there, watching all of the meaningless parts, waiting for the crucial piece of information that makes it all make sense. Lucky for me, I already had an idea as to what was happening. I know someone who had seen it, who enlightened me as to the key twist, which made all of the other twists that much more predictable.

And it's a very twisty movie. I actually feel good that I knew the Key Twist. I think I would have been even more pissed off at the end of the movie if I hadn't. The truly enfuriating thing abut this kind of movie, is that if you get pissed of at it's wittiness, supposed intellectuals assume that you're really dumb. Which may be the case, but you're not supposed to tell me that.

Moving on to some better qualities, the film has a very good cast. The cast didin't make me as happy as it could have, but I was still pretty ecstatic. However, I think Bruce Willis looks terrible with hair, and I think it should have been Brad Pitt instead of Josh Hartnett. Okay, Josh did a good job, and it's a little hard to tell one pretty boy from another, but as far as those shrimpy, baby-faced pretty boys go, Brad Pitt is my favourite, and whenever I see a movie with one of the other ones, I always think it should be Brad Pitt. Or maybe it's the Bruce Willis factor. After all, they were both damn good in Twelve Monkies. Of course, Brad Pitt's too old to play that role.

I also have liked Ben Kingsley better in other roles. Just for the record. I think he should stick to British people. I don't know. He's just better with a British accent, for obvious reasons.

Lucy Liu I liked very much. She's really good looking, and she's a good actress. She's a fully rounded actor. Ha. No, she's cool, she should be in everything. I guess I'll be looking forwards to Charlie's Angels 3 then. Groan.

My favourite thing about the movie was the wallpaper. Man, that movie had some crazy wallpaper. No really, some of the patterns were completely insane. They were like optical illusions, and it kind of hurt to look at them. I've never seen those kinds of wallpaper in my life, and I don't believe that they'd put something as insanity inducing as that in a hotel. Still, it had artistic value.

I suppose that's not a really great recommendation for a movie, but if you're really into wallpaper, you should go for it. Otherwise, it's kind of a waste of time. And Lucky Number Slevin is a really stupid name.

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