Who cares?

Rating: 1/10 (29 March 2006)

Lucky Number Slevin starts out innocently enough. Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis as Bruce Willis) introduces the film with some snappy lines, smoothly finds itself in an exposition with some more witty dialogue from Slevin (Josh Hartnett) and the slightly obnoxious Lindsey (Lucy Liu), a couple of gangsters break in and threaten Slevin - with clever style.
If that sounds condescending, it should. Lucky Number Slevin is clearly a product of the Pulp Fiction generation, and like its brethren, it lacks absolutely everything that made Pulp Fiction appealing in the first place. Characters toss off pop culture-enhanced monologues, regardless of actual character. Toss motivations out the window, these gangsters are classy! Even worse, the pop culture references are so forced, so unnecessary, just so... bad (Slevin and Lindsey's discussion on James Bond is the worst thing I've heard at the movies this year).
The direction is horribly confused. It is comical? Is it serious? There is no clarity in what the atmosphere is supposed to convey, so you can't connect to the situations. Well, that and the fact that Slevin also has some particularly dreadful pacing, culminating in a seemingly hour-long plot twist revelation, where the twist is revealed by detailing every little thing about the story. Scenes are repeated. There are nauseating jump-cuts. You learn more about the story than you care to know. Hell, you know more about the story than you do about the actual plot progression, if there was any at the endpoint. And that's how it ends. It just does.