Smoke and Mirrors. Spoilers.

Rating: 5/10 (26 September 2006)

A case of the Kansas City shuffle, or perhaps the emperor's new clothes. What a cast, gods of the big screen no less, all parceled up inabsolute nakedness, but you get the feeling watching this drivel that the cast members think they're in a masterpiece. What we have here is smoke and mirrors and more smoke and mirrors, a screenplay oh so clever that it winds up on itself, destroying all sense of commonsense. Too focused on being clever, too focused on deception, the movie fails to keep an eye on the peripherals, things viewers observe that don't tally, things that make some of us say, "how did he know that?" Of course the answer is: Because the writer says so." Case in point, how did Josh Hartnett know the assassin would shoot Lucy Liu in the chest?" You mean assassins don't aim for the head? Actually, in this movie they do; we see that early on. Of course it's hard to fake death with a bullet in the head. For the larger picture, the entire concept of mistaken identity, the linchpin of this movie, is a farce. Hartnett's character hardly spends any time protesting the mix-up, and when all is revealed the mistaken identity ploy makes even less sense. In the real world would anyone go to such great lengths? Of course not. You wouldn't need to; you'd just place yourself on that list of deadbeat gamblers by gambling. There again, if the writer stuck to a more believable set-up, there would beyou know, if grandma had balls she'd be. . . . I guess somewhere along the production path of "Lucky Number Slevin," something unusual and magical must have happened. This project must have looked like an Academy jewel and actors of great stature congregated upon the set, their eyes aglow, hypnotized by the jewel. Was there not one who saw that it was naked? I guess not. Deception was the name of the game, the old Kansas City Shuffle, as Bruce Willis so colorfully describes it. Like many others. I was deceived. Oh well. As for my comment about the actors being gods, nah, they're just actors.