Video reviews: 'Slevin' a crime of hits and misses

Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, September 15, 2006

Lucky Number Slevin

The Weinstein Co. DVD. 110 min. Rated R. $29.95. Grade: B

Lucky Number Slevin is a visually hip crime movie that celebrates the art of misdirection. It's like The Usual Suspects lite.

The story opens in the early '80s with a horse race being fixed at a track in New Jersey. Those involved and their families are subsequently murdered.

Jump to the present when a seemingly innocent bystander named Slevin (Josh Hartnett) finds himself caught between a rock and a hard place. Actually, he is caught between two crime lords: The Boss (Morgan Freeman) and The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley). Both think he's a gambler named Fisher. They want him to pay his debts, up to and including murder.

That shadowy figure in the background? That's Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis), an assassin for hire. He's working both sides against the middle and Slevin's the bait.

Written by Jason Smilovic and directed by Paul McGuigan, Slevin is one of those too-clever-by-half flicks designed to keep you guessing. Why do the bad guys keep insisting that Hartnett's character is someone he's not? What's the source of a decades-old feud between the mob bosses? And what's with Lucy Liu as a coroner with the hots for Slevin?

There are plenty of holes in Smilovic's inventive plot, and you have to wonder at McGuigan's proto-'60s production design. (Hallways are covered in wallpaper Timothy Leary might have designed.) Still, for most of this film we're kept guessing, and if the finale isn't exactly a revelation, it's smartly packaged and viscerally satisfying.

Give the filmmakers credit for trying to infuse the tired gangster genre with some offbeat style. Pity the substance here is mostly hit-and-miss.

Goal! The Dream Begins

Buena Vista. DVD. 118 min. Rated PG-13. $29.99. Grade: B-

I'm a sucker for underdog sports films, be it Rocky, Breaking Away or Remember the Titans. Goal! The Dream Begins fancies itself a bit of each of those films, as in a boy with a dream beats incredible odds to realize his moment in the sun.

Goal! isn't a great sports movie, but it's good. The novelty is that it is set in the world of professional soccer, not exactly a booming sub genre.

Santiago Munez (Kuno Becker) is an illegal immigrant who lives in L.A. with his gardener father, grandmother and little brother. He's a whiz with a soccer ball, with dreams of one day playing professionally. That day comes sooner than he expected when an ex-pro scout spies him playing in a park, and hooks him up with a tryout for Manchester United.

Not Manchester, N.H., mind you, but Manchester, England, where they take their football with utmost seriousness.

Can a guy who has already assimilated into one new culture fit into another? Does he have what it takes to play soccer with the big boys, guys who make millions of pounds a year sloshing it out in the mud and rain?

Wouldn't be much of a movie if he didn't.

Even as he grapples with the elitism of the soccer world, Santiago must deal with a disapproving father back home and his own infatuation with a lovely nurse.

Calculated? Sure and a tad wordy at times. Santiago has more mea culpa speeches than a professional penitent, and there's not a moment when we doubt he's going to make it. That makes genuine suspense here pretty scarce.

On the plus side, Becker makes Santiago such a likable naf (maybe too nave for modern times), that you can't help but root for him. Working with FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, the on-field footage of soccer matches looks incredible.

This is a case where smart performances and pacing trump predictability.

District B13

Magnolia. DVD. 84 min. Rated R. $26.98. Grade: C

There's a school of thought that holds that action films should be about only that: action. Forget dialogue and plotting. Just make things blow up.

If that sounds like a perfect movie for you, District B13 is the answer. This feisty import plays like the French version of Escape from New York.

It's 2013, and a large section of Paris has been walled off and the criminal element locked inside. When said crooks hijack a nuclear bomb and aim it at the free city, an undercover cop (Cyril Raffaelli) is sent in to defuse it. His guide is Leito (David Belle), a native of B13 with his own score to settle. Years ago his sister was kidnapped by a drug dealer who now keeps her on a leash like a pet.

That's about it except for the Speed element: The bomb is ticking down.

Cinematographer Pierre Morel makes his directing debut with B13 and the photography early on is dazzling. Pretty soon it settles for serviceable, since so much of what happens here is on the run. People are constantly being shot, stabbed, kicked, thrown out of cars or otherwise abused. And the chase truly is the thing here, as Belle - the founder of Parkour, the urban mobility movement - scrambles over roofs, stairs and other obstacles.

It'll get your blood pumping, in spots, even if it doesn't make a lick of sense.

District B13 is for action fans who want their films to play like a video game. Be warned, though: The bad English dubbing constantly threatens to turn it into a comedy.

Mike Pearson is features editor. pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592.