Where Did This Terrific Little Film Come From?

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2006)

This stylish and fiendishly entertaining puzzle movie stars Josh Hartnett, usually an actor I find it easy to dislike, giving a surprisingly good performance as Slevin, a laid-back drifter type who shows up at his friend's apartment to hang out for a few weeks and finds himself the target of two rival crime lords when he's mistaken for his friend. The plot twists and turns -- it's one of those movies where the whole point is the trick ending, but in this case (unlike so many movies of a similar ilk) the rest of the script is so well written that the ending, when it comes, actually feels like a payoff rather than a cheat.
Director Paul McGuigan gives the whole film a tone to match the character of Slevin. Everything is loose and cool -- even the violent scenes (and there are some pretty graphic ones) come and go without ruffling too many feathers. Hartnett gets solid support from Bruce Willis, that king of dead-pan crime films, and Lucy Liu, who seems somewhat less comfortable in her role as a chatty his girl Friday, and who gets disappointingly little to do. Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley play the crime lords. It's refreshing to see Freeman break away from his wizened sage roles, and Kingsley is strong as always, even if his accent is unidentifiable.
But the ultimate star of this film is the production design. Just keep your eye on the sets and decor, that add a fun house sense of disorientation to this diamond-in-the-rough of a movie.
Grade: A