Lucky Number Slevin [Blu-ray] | Danny Aiello, Ben Kingsley | More Style than Substance? Maybe,...

Lucky Number Slevin [Blu-ray] | Danny Aiello, Ben Kingsley | Lucky Number Slevin - Blu-ray Info

DVDs:

Lucky Number Slevi...

	Lucky Number Slevin [Blu-ray] Danny Aiello, Ben Kingsley Weinstein Company, 2008 average customer review:based on 148 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Set in the New York underworld where nothing is as it seems, Lucky # Slevin is an action-packed, "fun-as-hell roller coaster ride" (Venice Magazine). When down-on-his-luck Slevin (Josh Hartnett) stumbles into a running feud between the city's most feared crime bosses (Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley), he ignites an all-out war. Tracked by a mysterious assassin (Bruce Willis) and distracted by his flirtatious neighbor (Lucy Liu), Slevin must try to cheat death by turning the tables on the gangsters. "If you take the best parts of Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects and The Professional, what you get is Lucky # Slevin" (Shawn Edwards, Fox-TV).

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More Style than Substance? Maybe, But with this Much Style, it doesn't Matter!

I was gifted this movie and my first thought was, "What the hell is a Slevin?", but thanks to its clever dialogue, tongue-in-cheek humor, and excellent actors, Slevin quickly made it onto my short-list of favorite films.

This is a film that savors contrast, both in visual as well as narrative terms. Almost everything, from the wallpaper and floor tiles, to chessboards, and especially the central characters, suggests duality, light and dark, good and evil. The film itself goes from clever comedy to brutal revenge tale in the space of a single scene.

Cool visuals don't make a movie, but Slevin has plenty of cool in other places as well. Hartnett and Liu are charming and have some of the best on screen chemistry I've seen in a long time. Freeman and Kingsley are fun to watch in roles they don't usually get to play, and Willis delivers his usual steely-faced assassin bit with just the right amount of humanity.

DVD has no extra features - nada, zilch. So if you dig that stuff, you'll miss it here. Dolby Digital is available though, so you can at least get that theater quality audio.

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Lucky Number Slevin - Blu-ray Info

Version: U.S.A / Weinstein / Region A
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
MPEG-4 AVC BD-50 / High Profile 4.1
Running time: 1:49:55
Movie size: 34,91 GB
Disc size: 45,66 GB
Total bit rate: 42.35 Mbps
Average video bit rate: 34.22 Mbps
Number of chapters: 18
Subtitles: English SDH / Spanish

Dolby TrueHD Audio English 2854 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 2854kbps (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps)
Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps
Dolby Digital Audio French 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps

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Version: U.K / Entertainment in Video / Region A, B & C(?)
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
VC-1 BD-25
Running time: 1:50:07
Movie size: 22,14 GB
Disc size: 22,86 GB
Total bit rate: 26.81 Mbps
Average video bit rate: 23.52 Mbps
Number of chapters: 16
Subtitles: English
DTS-HD Master 5.1 1459Kbps (48kHz/16-bit)

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Excellent crime thriller

Crime thriller in which a young man called Slevin Kelevra (played by Josh Hartnett) is mistaken for his friend Nick Fisher who owes two crime lords money. The crime lords - The Boss (played by Morgan Freeman) and The Rabbi (played by Ben Kingsley) - both demand payment within days from Slevin or else his life will be forfeit. However The Boss offers Slevin a way out of the debt owed to him: kill The Rabbi's son to avenge his own son's murder (which he believes The Rabbi was responsible for) and that debt will be cancelled. What Slevin does not know is that the two crime lords making demands of him are following the instructions of an enigmatic assassin known only as Goodkat (played by Bruce Willis), who has a mysterious link to Slevin that goes back to a horse race that took place back in 1979. Furthermore, Goodkat is in the process of executing a complex and as yet unrevealed scheme known only as a `Kansas City Shuffle', which Slevin is at the heart of...

Comments: I found this to be a first-rate and stylish crime thriller, with a compelling story at its heart. Josh Hartnett is excellent as the film's main protagonist, Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley are also very good as the two crime lords with their sights both on Hartnett, and Bruce Willis is simply sublime as dispassionate and mysterious assassin Goodkat. Lucy Liu is also good as Slevin's love interest Lindsey, trying to help Slevin deal with his predicament. This film has lots of intelligent banter and lots of surprises: you will enjoy seeing all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place as what the film is about is revealed. There is also a good twist towards the end of the film. This film is violent (but not gratuitously so), and although the film did in my opinion have a few flaws it is nonetheless excellent, with a cast full of A-listers doing their jobs very well. Recommended.

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Offbeat Twists and Turns

Lucky Slevin is anything but conventional. As it begins, you are beginning to wonder if this is just another silly character film that goes nowhere. Even good actors (Willis, Freeman) make bad movies, right? But... if you are wiling to hang in there, "Lucky" turns from silly to powerfully focused and the twists are really quite unpredictable. When this one is over you will think, "Boy, better than I ever thought this would be!" Thumbs up!

It was decent, if a bit overly polished

As always, there is a limit to how bad anything Morgan Freeman appears in can be. He did a great job for his part, but there were some things that were a bit unexplained in the movie. Weak points:

1. What caused the schism between the two bosses? How did the timing work out so perfectly that the first boss knew that the second killed his son?
2. It is very easy for Bruce Willis to look cool, but it seems like his walking into a parking garage and shooting someone while in motion in an elevator was a bit.....overdone.
3. The treatment of how the failed bet (around which the whole movie was based) was a bit stretched. Were all that many steps really necessary to explain how the information traveled all the way to the person who made the bet?
4. When Lucy Liu's character was "killed" at the end of the movie (and the shooting was later found to have not been done properly), can we really believe that a hitman would make a hit and then not make sure that his target was dead? Pushing the limits of believability.
5. How was Bruce Willis' character someone who left New York for many years only to come right back and know all intimate details that would be needed for him to pull off the job in the way that it was pulled off?

Strong points:

1. It is nice how the whole movie came together in a sort of "Aha!" way at the end.

2. The casting was excellent. Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and all of the assistants to the boss did a great job in their roles ("Slow," etc).

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