Hartnett in a Towel and a Smile Trumps Alarming Body Count for Noir Entertainment

Rating: 8/10 (13 April 2006)

"Lucky Number Slevin" at first seems like a humorous noir tribute a la "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" of mistaken identity before it harshly turns into "V for Vendetta".
Telegraphed by a long prologue with the incredibly adorable kid from "E. R." with the crinkly eyes Oliver Davis, the first half of the film is dominated by the simply wonderful chemistry between a dryly laconic Josh Hartnett (with the crinkly eyes), quite attractively draped in a very low rise towel for at least a third of the film, and Lucy Liu in her best role since TV's "Ally McBeal". I'm not just biased that Liu grew up just down Queens Boulevard and went to the same high school as my son to admire that she plays an unusually smart cookie for a genre film, who is always thinking while she's volubly flirting, even while distracted by what's under that towel. I would certainly look forward to the two co-starring as a talky team again, even as he towers over her by over a foot. When the screen goes black as they hit the sack, with not even an old Movie Code fireplace or wind-blowing curtains in sight, director Paul McGuigan uses how much we want to see them together to cleverly distract us in the story when they have a cute morning-after.
Morgan Freeman is ever wily, especially in arch monologues, but Sir Ben Kingsley grinds the film to a halt as "The Rabbi". Though he was so scary in "Sexy Beast", he was similarly miscast in HBO's "Mrs. Harris" as a Jewish heavy, his "Rabbi" here is not just ludicrous in accent, plot and Talmudic rationalizations (it's usually British mysteries that enjoy the visual comedy of Hassidic criminals), but just seems like a desperate stretch to avoid the usual Italian or Russian mobster clichés.
Stanley Tucci doesn't get to play cop often and he sure seems to be enjoying gritty here. Mykelti Williams is almost unrecognizable, playing closer to his "Forrest Gump" character than his usual more recent wise acre cops. Robert Forster is a marvelous raconteur in a cameo monologue.
While bread crumbs are left throughout the film, especially through nagging little disrupters that at first seem like debut feature writer Jason Smilovic's script or continuity errors but turn out to be clues, the tone of the film changed quite abruptly as the bodies piled up, particularly those of characters we'd gotten to know. The audience fell into an uneasy silence, partly because you could literally hear people concentrating to follow the sudden plot twists. The ending, however, is surprisingly less cynical than usual for the genre. But then Hartnett's smile could melt any cynic.
While the cool opening credits recall classic Saul Bass, it doesn't live up to other film references, including Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" and various Bond movies. The discussion of L'il Abner's "Schmoo" seems too "Pulp Fiction" pop-culture referential, but I certainly will remember this film's definition of a Kansas City Shuffle if it's referred to in a future film.
The production design of each character's apartment and entrance hallways is amusingly garish, looking like Britain in the mod-'60's. Some of the exterior shots do seem too obviously set in the fictional NYC of the other Bruce Willis with guns movie this year "16 Blocks" that is really in Canada (odd that in promotional interviews the cast said they shot the film in Montreal whereas all the credits acknowledge Toronto and other places in Ontario).
The original trailer kept the mystery twists, but unfortunately the more recent ad campaign is giving too much away.