Kansas City Shuffle

Rating: 10/10 (13 September 2006)

The film opens in an anonymous bus station where Goodkat, talking to a seemingly random individual, begins to tell the story of a Kansas city shuffle. He tells of a series of events back in 1979 when rumors of a fixed horse race prompt several people, including a working class family man, to make a large bet on the horse in the hopes of changing their lives. However, the drugged horse, instead of effortlessly outstripping the others, has a heart attack right in the middle of the race. With no money to pay off the debt he owed to the mob, and since the mob had found out about the fix, the working man, his bookie, his wife, and his son are ordered to be put to death to send a message to others in the gambling society.
The film flashes back to the present day, when a young man named Slevin (Josh Hartnett), brought to town by care of his friend, is mugged while walking to his friend Nick's apartment. When he arrives he finds that the door is open and his friend is missing. While settling into the apartment (wearing only a towel) he meets Lindsey (Lucy Liu), and together they concoct the notion that his missing friend has in fact not gone out, but has been kidnapped, and that it is up to them to play amateur sleuths.
Just after she leaves to go to work, Slevin is forcibly taken (still wearing only a towel) to the office of powerful mob boss known as The Boss (Morgan Freeman), who has mistaken Slevin for his missing friend and is looking to collect on a large debt. As the only man in his organization who knew what Slevin's friend looked like was recently killed, the Boss has no reason not to think Slevin is, in fact, his friend Nick.
The Boss is willing to forgive the debt if Slevin agrees to murder the son of the rival mob boss known as The Rabbi (Kingsley), (so called, "because he's a rabbi"). The son is known as the Fairy - everyone knows about his homosexuality except his father. The Boss wants to have "the Fairy" killed in order to seek revenge upon the Rabbi for the recent murder of his own son. The Boss gives Slevin 24 hours to consider his options. Later in the film it is revealed that the Boss hired professional killer Goodkat to kill the Fairy, but the Boss agreed with Goodkat's proposal to have the killing done by Slevin, after which Goodkat would kill Slevin, in such a way that it would look like a suicide pact of two gay lovers, forcing the Rabbi to forgo the criminal war that would inevitably happen if he felt that the Boss was behind the death of the Fairy.
Soon after Slevin returns to his apartment he is taken by some goons to meet the Rabbi (who resides in a penthouse building right across the street from The Boss; the rivals are former friends and "business" associates). The Rabbi also mistakes Slevin for Nick; he wants Slevin to kill the Boss and come up with a large sum of money to pay off a debt. Slevin returns to his apartment, and confides about his situation to Lindsay. Lindsay has gotten a cell phone photo of the mysterious hit-man named 'Mr. Goodkat' (Willis), who is also seen in the shadows of both mob bosses. As Slevin reluctantly plans to murder the Fairy, he is accosted and watched by the police, and also thugs from both crime families, who have mistaken him for either a moron or a new professional hit-man. Meanwhile the sleuthing with Lindsay brings them closer together as passionate lovers.
The end of the film reveals that the whole story is about avenging the 1979 horse racing incident. At the time, when Slevin (called Henry) was a small boy, his parents were murdered by gangsters - among them both "The Boss," "The Rabbi," and the police detective. Goodkat was hired to kill Slevin, because no one else would take the job. Instead of killing the young boy, he took him in and raised him.
Grown-up Slevin and Goodkat make an elaborate plan to get close to both the Rabbi and the Boss. For this purpose, Slevin takes the identity of Nick Fisher, who owes a debt to both bosses' bookies. Fisher is murdered by Goodkat, as shown in the beginning of the film, and Slevin kills the son of the Boss, so that the Boss will hire Goodkat for revenge. Slevin fakes his own mugging so he cannot be properly identified, and has both bookies killed, stealing their books in the process. According to the plan discussed with the Boss, Slevin has a date with the Fairy, and kills him. This is a turning point in the film, since until then Slevin seemed friendly and naive, and not at all inclined to kill someone. Goodkat, instead of killing Slevin, kills the two bodyguards who storm in. Nick Fisher's body, which Goodkat has taken with him after murdering Fisher, is used in place of Slevin's - after Slevin and Goodkat detonate a bomb, Nick's body is burned beyond recognition. The Boss is not very satisfied, because "the job was not supposed to look like a job". Slevin and Goodkat kill a number of bodyguards, tie up the Boss and the Rabbi together, and finally Slevin takes the ultimate revenge, killing the two in the same way his father was killed, by suffocation in a plastic bag. In the end the whole story about the Boss and the Rabbi killing is told to the Police officer by another officer. It is then we realise that the cop was also involved in murdering Henry's mother. Slevin is hidden in the car during the conversation and he kills the cop.