Lucky Number Slevin(2006)- User Reviews

"There was a time."
The movie opens with two strangers sitting in the desserted waiting room of a bus station.

One of them, a man in a wheelchair who calls himself Goodkat (Bruce Willis), launches into a story about what he calls "A Kansas City Shuffle."

"What's a Kansas City Shuffle?" the other man asks.
"A Kansas City Shuffle is when everybody looks right, and you go left."

Shortly after, Goodkat breaks the other man's neck; his handicap nothing but a hoax.

Cut to Slevin Kelevra (Josh Hartnett), who's just lost his job, had his building condemned, caught his girlfriend in bed with another man, AND been mugged all in the same day, and who's now staying at his best friend Nick Fisher's...only Nick is nowhere to be found.

Instead whom he finds is Nick's neighbor Lindsey (Lucy Liu), who barges in to borrow a cup of sugar, and finds a stranger standing in Nick's kitchen.

Slevin explains who he is, and the two quickly hit it off...

But within minutes of Lindsay's departure, two goons show up, and believing Slevin to be Nick Fisher take him to see The Boss.

The Boss (Morgan Freeman) doesn't want much...just the ninety-six thousand dollars cash Nick owes him. And since the man he believes to be Nick Fisher can't come up with the money, The Boss wants him to do a service instead.

It involves killing Yitchok the Fairy.
"Why do they call him a fairy?"
"Because he's a fairy."

Yitzchok is the only son of the Bosses partner-turned-rival The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) who that morning was responsible for killing the Bosses son. In retaliation, Yitzchok must die.

If Slevin doesn't kill him, he will die too.

Slevin barely has time to return to Nick's apartment and assimilate this information when two of the Rabbi's goons show up, and take him away, thinking, of course, that he's someone else.

It seems Nick Fisher ALSO owes thirty-six thousand dollars to The Rabbi who (oblivious to the fact that Slevin has been hired to kill his son) gives him 48 hours to come up with the money...or else he will be killed.

Slevin's only allie is Lindsay, who's a coroner, and believes that he was set up by Nick Fisher to take the fall for his debts.

And, as if things weren't bad enough, Slevin is also being pursued by the relentless Detective Brikowski (Stanley Tucci), and the mysterious Goodkat (for reasons that seem to involve Slevin directly) is kahooting with both The Boss and The Rabbi.

This is an unusally original, surprinsingly hysterical, completely off-the-wall Mafia movie.

Everybody is just terrific.
Josh Hartnett is perfect as the main character, and the supporting cast makes the movie.

This is truly one of the finest stories about mistaken identity, organized crime and retribution that I've ever seen.

I hope that in later years it will be apreaciated
for the gem that it is.