LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN (Paul McGuigan, 2006) ***

Rating: 7/10 (17 February 2007)

First off, I have to confess that if my Bank Manager hadn't lent it to me, most probably I would never have watched this one  given my aversion to both Josh Hartnett and Bruce Willis! However, I was pleasantly surprised  as much by the film itself as by Hartnett's wholly agreeable contribution (though Willis was as stolid as ever): this is a violent yet tongue-in-cheek gangster thriller in the Tarantino vein with a similarly convoluted, clever and witty script filled with genre references and, more specifically, features three actors who had previously appeared in his films (Willis, Lucy Liu and an uncredited Robert Forster). Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley play mobster enemies and Stanley Tucci a cop  all three share a guilty past which connects them to both Hartnett and Willis who, for plot purposes, act like they're complete strangers while pitting one gang against the other YOJIMBO (1961)-style. McGuigan's direction is predictably heavy on flashbacks, jump-cuts and other disorienting narrative techniques  all of which used to be a monopoly of Alain Resnais in the 1960s, but is now the stuff of every other self-respecting thriller in this post-Tarantino age of film-making!