Sucky Number Slevin

The wife and I were searching for a movie to watch on Netflix the other night, and she liked the trailer for Lucky Number Slevin. The trailer is cute, with lots of wisecracking, Josh Hartnett taking punches with aplomb and accidentally exposing himself to Lucy Liu, and a couple of kidnappers that engage in witty repartee.

Slevin: I'm not the guy you're looking for. I don't live here.

Sloe: Well you look like the guy who lives here.

Slevin: You don't know what the guy who lives here looks like.

Henchman: What he means to say is you look like you live here.

Henchman glances at Sloe for reinforcement.

Sloe: Yeah that's what I mean to say.

Funny, funny stuff, and Sloe, played by Mykelti Williamson, has a speech affectation involving his lower mandible, just like when he played Bubba in Forrest Gump! The trailer has a jazzy saxophone riff and lots of Bruce Willis, and what I think is, edgy and off-beat like Pulp Fiction

I will never know if this movie is better or worse than the 51% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. We couldn't get past the first five minutes. In the first scene, a man is walking to his car in a parking garage. He approaches a dirty car with grimy windows, when bang, for no reason, he is assassinated in a hail of bullets. Who is this character, and why was he bumped off, we aren't told. The viewer is just startled by this sudden act of violence.

In the next scene, Bruce Willis attempts some exposition by talking about the "Kansas City Shuffle," to a young man in an airport waiting room. Then he snaps his neck. Who was this this doe-eyed young man, and why did he have to get bumped off by Bruce Willis? Then I started wondering about who is Bruce Willis's hairpiece wrangler. Does driving around with a portfolio of rugs pay well? Will the rug wrangler be mentioned in the credits?

After Bruce Willis and his squirrel, excuse me, Mr. Goodkat and his squirrel, kill this guy, there is a montage of random people walking out of random buildings and being greeted with volleys of small-arms fire. The bodies are really starting to pile up. There has been no attempt by the director, Paul McGuigan, to explain who these corpses are or why they needed to become corpses.

That's a little thing called context, Mr. McGuigan.

Best of luck with your directing career, Mr. McGuigan. Er, after looking at your IMDB biography, maybe I should leave out the directing part. You made Wicker Park? Didn't see it. You made Push? Seems like that was the last time anyone saw Dakota Fanning.

Hard to imagine a movie where more talent was wasted. Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci, Morgan Freeman, Danny Aiello, even Robert Forster! I would rather have a dental procedure than watch this movie, that's how bad it was. I would rather watch a porno sitting next to my sister. I'd tell you not to quit your day job, but you probably suck at that too.