Germany/USA, R, 109 m, 2006
Directed by Paul McGuigan. Stars Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, et al. 

At first blush, the title strikes us as cleverly ironic, but it’s the most vital of untold clues that serve to crack this witty, blood-splattered puzzle from writer Jason Smilovic (TV’s “Karen Sisco”) and director Paul McGuigan (Gangster No. 1). Slevin, played by that bed-headed sad sack Josh Hartnett, arrives in the Big Apple and winds up being mistaken for a degenerate gambler that has been marked for death by two warring crime bosses, the Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and the Boss (Morgan Freeman)—neither of whom will leave his respective tower for fear of being done in by the other. As luck would have it, they both hire an enigmatic hitman, Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis), to waste Slevin (his surname, Kelevra, is Hebrew for “bad dog”), but Goodkat is playing the nasty pricks against each other (á là Miller’s Crossing) in an elaborate con dubbed the “Kansas City Shuffle.” The picture has a strong Quentin Tarantino vibe (especially the self-reflexive dialogue), but not even Tarantino does Tarantino this well. Slevin also makes use of Matchstick Men, particularly the mind-fuck of a twist ending that has become de rigueur in genre films since the Sixth Sense. (Alan Parker’s Angel Heart predates the trend by more than a decade with what still may be the cinema’s dandiest final reel flip.) We expect nothing short of greatness from acting racehorses like Freeman and Kingsley, but Hartnett deserves his props for putting in a good performance despite having to wear only a towel for a good share of his screen time. (You might be more put off by his character’s weird condition: ataraxia, a “freedom from worry or any other pre-occupation.”) The film co-stars Lucy Liu as Slevin’s toey neighbor, Stanley Tucci as a hangdog dick with a shady secret, and Dorian Missick and Mykelti Williamson as a couple of dull-witted goons. Robert Forster pops up in the last act to help the audience connect all the dots, which seems like the biggest waste of talent since Christopher Walken explained the significance of the gold watch in Pulp Fiction. But Forster is doing the same job here that Simon Oakland did in Hitch’s Psycho, and I guess that puts Forster in good company.

September 12, 2006

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.