Lucky Number Slevin

Year 13, Day 337 - 12/3/21 - Movie #3,989

BEFORE: I worked at an advance screening of "West Side Story" last night, just for a few hours, but I have to get my shifts in where I can, because I think in about a week there won't be very many screenings, because of the holiday season. I think everybody out there is going to go completely nuts for Christmas this year, because they were denied a real holiday last year.  That's not how things work, you don't get double-Christmas this year because of the pandemic, the fact that you couldn't see visit your family last year maybe sucked, sure, but that doesn't mean you have to double down this time around!  I got a taste of Christmas at home in New York, and I don't know, it seemed a lot calmer than going to visit my parents and cooking a giant meal and sitting around and unwrapping gifts together, all that pressure.  Who needs it?  But I think I'm probably in the minority here. 

Ben Kingsley carries over again from "Locked Down". That's enough Ben Kingsley for this year, but he should be back in January if my plans hold up.  It's funny, I could have watched "West Side Story" and linked to it next, via Corey Stoll - but I'm not sure where I'd go after that, plus I have my plan in place to get me to Christmas in just 11 films, and I don't want to mess that up. 

THE PLOT: 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.  Under constant surveillance by Detective Brikowski and assassin Goodkat, he must get them before they get him. 

AFTER: Well, see, this is just clearly a movie that was trying WAY too hard.  It wanted to be "Pulp Fiction" so bad that it fell victim to copycat syndrome, somebody felt that if they could just find a story twisty enough, so twisty that the plot would loop around and fold back in upon itself a at the end, with a lot of violence along the way, plus cast Bruce Willis as a man looking for redemption, people would love it, just like they love "Pulp Fiction". Sorry, it's just not that easy.  Tarantino learned over several films how to withhold important information and only release it in little bits when necessary, so the viewer assembles the whole story over the length of the film, but there's something of an art to it, just automatically following the pattern doesn't always get you there, if "there" is something akin to masterpiece status.  

At the start, we're shown a bunch of rather confusing images - a bunch of gangsters (we presume) taken down in rapid succession.  Two bookies (we learn their names later, it's not that important at first) also shot and killed, and then an man strikes up a conversation with another man in an airport, tells him a story about a gambler who bet too big and was killed by bookies, then after telling the story, the first man performs a "Kansas City Shuffle" and kills the second man.  Why?  Where does this fit in the grand scheme of things, and what's the connection to the killing of those two bookies?  Ah, all in good time. 

We then catch up with Slevin, a man who's recently come to New York after he found his girlfriend in bed with another man.  He came to crash with his friend, Nick Fisher, but as he tells Lindsey, the lady who lives across the hall, shortly after arriving in town he got mugged, losing his I.D. and cash, but for some reason, not his watch.  Nobody can find Nick Fisher, which is a bad sign, but fortunately he left the apartment door open for Nick.  But then two goons come around looking for Nick, and they find Slevin instead - since their orders are to bring the person from THAT apartment to see The Boss, that's what they do.  The Boss naturally assumes that this Slevin is Nick Fisher, despite his claim to not be Nick - you know, that's exactly what Nick would say, that he's not Nick. So The Boss says that Nick owes somebody who owes him, meaning Nick owes him a lot of money.  But instead he'll allow Slevin/Not Nick to work off the debt, all he needs to do is kill the son of The Boss' rival, The Rabbi, since the Rabbi had HIS son killed.  (Ah, that stuff from the start of the film is important, after all!)

Then Slevin/Not Nick gets called before the Rabbi, too - apparently Nick owed money to BOTH crime bosses, yeah, that totally sounds like a Nick move.  Then there are two cops who start following Slevin around, because they know he's Not Nick, but they don't know who we IS, and they also want to know who he's working for, and what his connection is to that assassin, Mr. Goodkat, the guy who kills people in airports mid-converation.  Instead of killing the son of The Rabbi, Slevin/Not Nick takes a different approach, he talks to him in the men's room and arranges a date with him.  Then when he shows up for the date, having gained his trust, of course THEN he shoots him.  I knew the dating scene was tough out there, but this seems like a bit much.  

My problem here is two-fold, first that the film's withholding information about who is who and what all their connections to each other are gets annoying pretty quickly, plus it makes every single transaction between two people about five times more complicated than it needs to be.  I'm not saying that things don't make sense once all of the truths are revealed, it probably does, but it took such a LOOONG time getting there, because the plot never charts a direct course there, or anywhere, it's just one diversion after another.  Sometimes these diversions turn out to be very important, other times, not so much.  If anything it felt a bit like the most recent season of "Fargo", which could have wrapped up the storyline in about three episodes after setting up the premise, only then how would they fill up the rest of the picture?  

The second problem is that the second half of the films delights in explaining how everything we were told in the first half isn't really true.  OK, so then WHY did you tell me all that stuff, if you were only going to remove it quickly later, I don't really enjoy having the rug pulled out from under me, that makes it very difficult to stay upright.  Know what I mean?  Sure, I could point out that there are probably a few too many characters, and at least one too many reversals, but I think the main problem is that it keeps the audience in the dark just a little too long, really tried to be mysterious and obtuse about everything, so you have to watch it a second time just to figure out what was really happening from the start.  It didn't HAVE to be that way, I maintain that not everything needs to be this difficult. 

Also starring Josh Hartnett (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Lucy Liu (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Spielberg"), Michael Rubenfeld (last seen in "The Recruit"), Peter Outerbridge (last seen in "Mission to Mars"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Kevin Chamberlin (last seen in "The Prom"), Dorian Missick (last seen in "Monster"), Mykelti Williamson (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Scott Gibson (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Daniel Kash, Dmitry Chepovetsky, Sam Jaeger, Danny Aiello (last seen in "Little Italy"), Gerry Mendicino (ditto), Oliver Davis, Corey Stoll (last seen in "The Seagull"), Howard Jerome, J.D. Jackson, Jennifer Miller, Sebastien Roberts, Robert Forster (last seen in "Middle Men"), Shira Leigh, Janet Lane, Nicholas Rice, Bernard Kay, Sam Stone, Darren Marsman, Diego Klattenhoff (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Rick Bramucci, Rami Posner, Victoria Barkoff, Victoria Fodor, Barbara Barnes-Hopkins, Judy Sinclair (last seen in "Don't Say a Word"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 actors who played Blofeld