Slight

Rating: 4/10 (22 April 2006)

Narrative games are played throughout here, this is one of those movies where nothing is as it first appears to be. The pretext though is that Josh Hartnett is "Slevin", a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time who gets caught between two rival gangland bosses.
Very similar to THE USUAL SUSPECTS, though that was better plotted and a slyer game all around. Hartnett is a vacuous bowl of suck stuck right in the center of this, a good example of how bad casting can hurt a film. I suppose as an amiable doofus he's okay, but once he has to become effective he's pretty laughable.
Structured clunkily, with the big reveal taking up far too much time (as Hartnett has to actually explain to us the plot -- most of which we've figured out, thank you very much). The script bounces around from the well written to the not-so well written: in general it suffers from a kind of self-regard or self-importance that afflicts a lot of Tarantino imitators. (It's interesting that Tarantino's imitators have never understood Tarantino's light touch.) On the other hand, it's mostly very well acted (outside of Hartnett) and that alone lifts a lot of it. Willis is becoming iconic, Freeman and Kingsley get to chew the scenery enjoyably, Lucy Liu is surprisingly winningly girly (a nice break from her Dragon Queen persona). Nicely cast even in small parts, too, with Stanley Tucci and Danny Aiello is small roles.
I wouldn't search it out, but it's the kind of movie that, if it's playing on cable in a hotel room, you won't feel embarrassed about using it to kill some time.