David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com

Rating: 4/10 (13 March 2006)

Wednesday March 8, 7:00pm The Harvard Exit
"I live on both sides of the fence and the grass is always green."
Four violent murders are committed before the titles finish rolling in Lucky Number Slevin. Josh Hartnett in the title role plays the apparent victim of mistaken identity, drawn into a hornet's nest of gore as rival New York gangsters commit one revenge killing after another. Bloody executions for the unpaid gambling debt on "a drugstore handicap" at the horse track serve as a flashback prologue and setup for eventual retribution. The final plot twist is so predictable it makes the hour and a half before it nearly a total snooze. High expectations that go with such a stellar cast, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu (She is too cute!), Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci and Hartnett all but guarantee disappointment. Lucky Number Slevin should play well to a teenage audience with its formulaic sex, violence, pyrotechnics and MTV style editing, but will come off as shallow, tasteless and unsatisfying to everyone else.