There was a time...

Rating: 6/10 (13 August 2007)

Paul McGuigan is an enormously talented man. His film before "Lucky Number Slevin", "Wicker Park" was jumping around in style and intensity; and in everything: performances, camera use, intelligent writing. These three things in special repeat themselves in "Lucky Number Slevin", where McGuigan got some really professional actors that couldn't do much (Ben Kingsley and Stanley Tucci) and others that had a blast (Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis). But it's difficult to sit down and appreciate performances in this film; it goes faster than "Wicker Park".
Again, the director brought Josh Hartnett for the main role, and again he puts the young actor in the wrong place at the wrong time. To say that "Lucky Number Slevin" is a story about a guy in that situation above mentioned would be fair enough; because telling the rest is spoiling it for the viewer. At times, you can't take your eyes off of the screen, but there were moments where I honestly felt a little tired.
It would be unfair to blame Jason Smilovic's script for this, but he throws a lot of things in and the movie is just above one hundred minutes. And I've been thinking if the movie would have been better with more detail and pauses so we could really understand and study the characters, but I say noBecause this is how McGuigan works, and here Peter Sova's cinematography and Andrew Hulme's edition are better than ever; with challenging close ups, imaginative shots, beautiful quick cuts and a solid use of flashbacks.
The movie requires flashbacks because it's a mess, but it's a nice mess. An intelligent mess with avoidance (and also mocking) of the clichés all the way through, with intelligent movie references and an unexpected resolution you only see coming when you have to. Is it too intelligent for its own good? I really don't know, because it doesn't just put a lot of words and some action so we get distracted; it focuses completely on the words and conversations of the characters. Yes, we don't remember some characters and they're not really developed, but the script asks questions about things we've seen some minutes agoIt goes back on the story; it wants to know if we're really paying attention.
I never stopped paying attention because of what I said before, because McGuigan's way of capturing a city's feeling, because of J. Ralph's exhilarating score and also because the actors' faces. Morgan Freeman's face demands attention and, believe it, also does Josh Hartnett's. Both of them take the film to high levels, while Bruce Willis makes a great narrator but a not so great player in person. In other words, it's his voice and not his face that demands attention.
The good thing is that you want to see the movie again when it's over, because you feel like you've missed a lot; just like it happened to me with "Wicker Park", which was a remakeThis is an original. The good thing is that you'll never forget about something called "The Kansas City Shuffle". The bad thing is that Paul McGuigan can make a great movie, but "Lucky Number Slevin" is not it.