Not a bad thriller, that is clever but just not clever enough as it thinks...

Rating: 5/10 (12 March 2006)

If you take two great established actors as opposing heads of gangster families, add in another handful of successful established movie actor with an intriguing script and unorthodox direction, you are likely to get an intriguing and interesting movie. Yet adding all those elements up don't seem to work for this film.
The film centres around a man who is charged by two sets of gangsters as owing them money for gambling debts, even though he is the wrong man, and the only way out of it is to pay off the debts by doing a hit job! Add in another layer of a mystery (sic!) hit-man stealthily chasing after him also, plus a nosey lovable female neighbour and you have an increasingly complicated outline to the movie. But its not complicated, and the direction of the movie follows in a diluted form of what "The Usual Suspects" was like even when you take in the inevitable twists into account.
The story is nonsense, and the acting is generally not above par, not that it really requires it. Ben Kingsley is wonderful as ever, but Morgan Freeman doesn't look like he wants to be there. Lucy Liu is also only there as a silly love interest, not convincing either, plus else there would have been no female role in the movie without her (excusing the unnecessary sex scenes of the other women earlier in the movie)! Its not all a bad movie, just the clever writing is not clever enough to want a second viewing. Maybe some further work with more editing and input could have tightened up the movie and maybe it harder hitting, but then again maybe a lighter movie was what was happened. Another missed opportunity of a movie, but not by any stretch a terrible movie. Enjoyable, but no more than that.