Overall I enjoyed it, but you have to tolerate lots of violence.

Rating: Null/10 (24 September 2006)

Josh Hartnett is actually pretty good as Slevin Kelevra. We see him show up at his friend's apartment and right away gets in trouble, kidnapped by two thugs who bring him to 'the Boss' (Morgan Freeman), and make him a deal he can't refuse. In return his debt will be can-celled. But Slevin wonders, "What debt?" Then, a short time after being returned to his friend's apartment two different goons take him to their boss, 'the Rabbi (Ben Kingsley), who happens to live right across the street from 'the Boss' and they, bitter rivals, often stare at each other across the abyss.
This movie has lots of unsavory language and violence, but it is done in a style that begs the viewer not to take it too seriously. The critic Ebert gave it a very mediocre review, but what he disliked are some of the things I like about it. One being the unusual and witty dialog, almost like a parody of a David Mamet script.
Other main characters are Bruce Willis as Goodkat, a professional assassin, and Lucy Liu as Lindsey, who lives in the same building as Slevin's friend, and who works for the coroner's office. As the movie unfolds we learn that little is what it seems to be at first.
SPOILERS FOLLOW. The story, not revealed chronologically, is rather simple. The first scene takes place 25 years earlier, and a young boy sees his father killed for gambling losses, the last one on a horse called 'Lucky Number Slevin', and that's where the title of the movie is taken. Goodkat looks at the boy in the eyes and spares him. The boy grows up to be the Josh Hartnett character and he with Goodkat plan the revenge killing of 'the Boss', 'the Rabbi', and several others who had been involved in his parents' deaths. He wasn't really friends with the guy in the apartment, that was just a setup to get him into position to take his revenge, as were everything else in the movie.