'Slevin' goes nowhere in style

Friday, April 7, 2006

I don't know precisely when it happened, but it seems as if a whole generation of young filmmakers has lost interest in reality. They opt instead for highly stylized movies in which everything from language to behavior seems to spring from the corner of movie imagination where genres are stored.

It's as if these filmmakers decided it's better to create a world full of hidden dangers than plunge into a real one. The resultant movies can seem like acts of fantasy fulfillment - if not for audiences, then for the filmmakers.

Lucky Number Slevin, the latest movie to take us into an artificially flavored gangster fantasyland, may not be interested in the deepest human longing, but it definitely has a handle on style. Although the movie can't help but feel a bit derivative, it winds up providing some fun, thanks in large measure to an exceptionally strong cast.

Lucky Number Slevin's A-list cast adds heft to a B-movie world as Josh Hartnett again teams with director Paul McGuigan (Wicker Park). Hartnett plays Slevin, a young man mistaken for another young man. As a result, Slevin finds himself in the middle of heated gang rivalry.

On one side is The Boss (Morgan Freeman), a New York crime czar who insists that Slevin owes him money. To repay the dept, Slevin must assassinate Shlomo (aka The Rabbi), an Orthodox Jewish mobster played by Ben Kingsley.

It seems both The Boss and The Rabbi have lost sons in gang fighting, giving the movie a father-son subtext that never quite reaches the level of insight, perhaps because nothing can break through a thick tangle of twists and turns. Put it this way: If plot complications cost money, they would have eaten up three-quarters of the movie's budget.

But the actors seem to enjoy playing the movie's many games. Bruce Willis, in another strong turn, portrays Goodkat, a stoic hit man. The role reminds us that Willis doesn't need to be at the center of every movie and makes you eager to see how his career will continue.

Willis begins the movie by talking about the Kansas City Shuffle, and the movie goes on from there, inventing cons and gangster games until the whole business starts to play like a cross between Lewis Carroll and Mickey Spillane.

Of course, nothing feels entirely real, which may be why the characters don't really communicate. They don't so much converse as play word games, a preoccupation that reaches its height in interchanges between a coroner (a bright Lucy Liu) and Hartnett's character.

About the movie's derivative qualities: It's impossible to watch a movie such as Lucky Number Slevin without thinking of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, but there's no question that McGuigan has mastered the visual lingo of the contemporary crime drama, which he puts on lavish display as he builds toward the inevitable, revenge-laden climax.

When Lucky Number Slevin premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, roughly half the critics with whom I spoke guessed the movie's big secret long before the finish. In a way, that hardly matters. Lucky Number Slevin provides the kind of enjoyment you get from watching a skilled tap dancer ply his trade on a highly polished surface. Style trumps substance.

To enjoy Lucky Number Slevin, you may have to ignore the showy qualities of a Jason Smilovic script in which the writing can be so self-conscious you can almost hear the tap of typewriter keys. Moreover, the self-consciousness doesn't stop with language. The interiors are so overdesigned that at one point I half wondered whether the movie wasn't mostly about wallpaper.

But Hartnett's charm, Freeman's weight and Kingsley's grand act of slumming (he manages to be both precise and overly broad at the same time) keep the movie's wheels spinning, even if it's not really headed anywhere important.