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No Luck Required in the Making of Slevin by Mike-oh


Bruce Willis can't seem to get anyone to look in the direction he points.

Lucky Number Slevin. Paul McGuigan was born one day before I was. In Scotland. Why he is a successful feature film director working with the likes of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci, and Josh Hartnett and I am not might be summed up with the very same words used as the tagline for his latest film, Lucky Number Slevin — Wrong Time. Wrong Place. Wrong Number. Story of my life. Or at least so it seems on all the bad days. But as the Rabbi, played by Sir Ben Kingsley, says in the film, and I paraphrase, you don't ever realize you're lucky until the day when you're unlucky. Then you wish you were as lucky as you were yesterday.

In making Lucky Number Slevin, McGuigan did not count on luck. He hedged his bets with a great cast and help from Executive Producer Don Carmody who has other fast-paced, stylish, crime-action flicks under his belt like Heist, Get Carter, The Art of War, The Whole Nine Yards, and Johny Mnemonic. Perhaps his biggest gamble was the relatively green Jason Smilovic who wrote the screenplay.

What these people created was first and formost, a very stylish film. One of the things that stuck out while watching the movie was the over the top wallpaper used on every set. Whether intentional or not, the art director created their own groovy universe where everything is wild flowers, paisley, and bubbles. I would also refer to the editing as stylish where multiple times throughout the movie, a transition was made from one scene to the next using an object as a bridge — the same object in the preceding scene remains on camera as we cut to the next scene. Stylish describes the clothes these people wear, the furniture in their apartments, even the chess set that the Boss, played by Morgan Freeman, uses to prove to everyone what an intelligent and thoughtful guy he really is.

If you can't tell, I really liked the style of the movie. I also really appreciated how Josh Hartnett played Slevin totally unphased throughout all of the events that he appears to be dragged through. Check out this dialogue between him and a cop played by Stanley Tucci.

Brikowski: Who are you?
Slevin: Philosophically speaking?
Brikowski: Name.
Slevin: Rank, serial number?
Dumbrowski: You should really play ball kid.
Slevin: Really? You think I'm tall enough?
Brikowski: [hits Slevin in stomach]
Brikowski: What is your name?
Slevin: [gasping for breath] Oh yeah, now I remember, Slevin Kelevra.

Lots of witty banter. Especially between Hartnett and Liu. Witty banter and stylish filming and editing with a top-notch cast. Throw in some great action scenes (and there were some great action scenes) and you have a hit movie on your hands.

But Lucky Number Slevin isn't exactly a hit movie. Why? There are a few flies in the ointment. For example, the members of the cast are all fantastic actors without question. But Morgan Freeman is about a thousand times less convincing as a mobster than William Hurt was in A History of Violence. He just can't seem to find it in himslef to play a bad guy. And this wasn't his first attempt. Based on his performance in Hard Rain, you'd think he might've been passed over for this role. But I guess, if you're Morgan Freeman, you get to play the bad guy when you want to. And apparently he wants to. He's been trying to shake his good guy image ever since he did Driving Miss Daisy. But this performance isn't gonna help. He's just too damn polite and kind.

But Morgan wasn't the only big name actor dropping the ball on this one. Sir Ben Kingsley does a terrible job as a jewish gangster. I think that these actors see a screenplay and feel like it will be a chance to experiment. But this is an accent experiment gone horribly wrong. Kinda like Wilford Brimley's cajun accent in the regrettable Hard Target. Or Brad Pitt's awful Austrian accent in Seven Years in Tibet. (I mean really — all Pitt had to do was a Schwarzenneger imitation or even a Dana Carvey doing Ahnold imitation.) Of course, Kingsley is probably loathe to do a stereotypical Jewish portrayal. But what he did in its place just didn't work.

One last compalint before I remind you how much I liked the movie. Bruce Willis has this awful line at the end of the film when Hartnett asks him how he found him and Willis' reply was something like, "Becasue I'm a world-class hitman, dumbass." It sounded as stupid as Frank Miller having Batman tell Dick Grayson that, "I'm the goddamn Batman!" in the miserable DC comic book, All-Star Batman and Robin.

But enough griping. Because all in all, this was a very entertaining, fun to watch, involving movie. I'm sure we will continue to see more greatness from Paul McGuigan in the future. If this is any indication of what he's capable of with a little experience, I can't wait to see what happens when he gets a little lucky.

Lucky Number Slevin was out in theaters earlier this year and is now available to rent or buy on DVD. Enjoy.

So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Give us your feedback.