Lucky Number Slevin

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Lucky Number Slevin is a 2006 action/mystery film written by Jason Smilovic, directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Josh Hartnett, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Stanley Tucci and Bruce Willis. It is set in New York City, and the plot focuses on the paths of Slevin Kelevra (Hartnett), Lindsey (Liu), two feuding crime bosses known as the Boss (Freeman) and the Rabbi (Kingsley), and a mysterious assassin known as Mr. Goodkat (Willis).

The movie is a retelling in contemporary times of the main plot elements of Akira Kurosawa's film Yojimbo (1961), (and thus Sergio Leone's 1964 film, A Fistful of Dollars).

Plot

The film opens in an anonymous, indeterminate transportation terminal with an old man (Bruce Willis), talking to a seemingly random stranger, begins to tell the story of a Kansas City Shuffle. He tells of a series of events back in 1979 when rumors of a fixed horse race prompt several people, including a working class family man, to make a large bet on the horse in the hopes of changing their lives. However, the drugged horse, instead of effortlessly outstripping the others, suffers and dies of a heart attack on the home stretch of the race. With no money to pay off the debt he owed to the mob, and since the mob had found out about the fix, the working man, his bookie, his wife, and his son are ordered to be killed to send a message to others in the gambling society. As the stranger becomes enthralled by the story, the old man distracts him, and then suddenly snaps his neck, instantly killing the man.

The film flashes back to the present day, when a young man named Slevin Kelevra (Josh Hartnett), brought to town by care of his friend, is mugged while walking to his friend Nick Fisher's apartment. When he arrives he finds that the door is open and his friend is missing. While settling into the apartment (wearing only a towel) he meets Lindsey (Lucy Liu). Lindsey thinks Nick is in trouble and immediately embarks on a mission to find out what happened to him. Lindsey goes out of his apartment, and Slevin takes off this towel to dry himself, fully exposing his front side, and Lindsey pops back in. After a brief, somewhat awkward moment between the two, she leaves again and Slevin is left alone in the apartment.

Just after she leaves to go to work, Slevin is forcibly taken to the office of powerful mob boss known as The Boss (Morgan Freeman), who has mistaken Slevin for Nick and is looking to collect on a large debt.

The Boss is willing to forgive the debt if Slevin agrees to murder the son of the rival mob boss known as The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley), (so called, "because he's a rabbi"). The son is known as the Fairy - everyone knows about his homosexuality except his father. The Boss wants to have "the Fairy" killed in order to seek revenge upon the Rabbi for the recent murder of his own son. The Boss gives Slevin until the next morning to consider his options. Later in the film it is revealed that the Boss hired professional killer Smith to kill the Fairy, but the Boss agreed with Smith's proposal to have the killing done by Nick Fisher, after which Smith would kill Nick, in such a way that it would look like a suicide pact of two gay lovers, forcing the Rabbi to forgo the criminal war that would inevitably happen if he felt that the Boss was behind the death of the Fairy.

Soon after Slevin returns to his apartment he is taken by some goons to meet the Rabbi (who resides in a penthouse building right across the street from The Boss; the rivals are former friends and "business" associates). The Rabbi also mistakes Slevin for Nick, and he too wants Slevin to come up with a large sum of money to pay off a debt. Slevin returns to his apartment, and confides about his situation to Lindsey. Lindsey has gotten a cell phone photo of the mysterious hit man named Smith (Willis), who is also seen in the shadows of both mob bosses. As Slevin reluctantly plans to murder the Fairy, he is accosted and watched by the police who have mistaken him for either a moron or a new professional hit man. (The police are apparently the only ones who know Slevin is not Nick; Nick had done 8 years in prison for raping a 14-year old girl.) Meanwhile the sleuthing with Lindsey brings them closer together as passionate lovers.

The end of the film reveals that the whole story is about avenging the 1979 horse racing incident. At the time, when Slevin (his real name, Henry) was a small boy, his parents were murdered by gangsters - among them both "The Boss," "The Rabbi," and the police detective. Smith – whose real name turns out to be “Goodkat” – was hired to kill Slevin, because no one else would take the job. Instead of killing the young boy, he took him in and raised him.

Grown-up Slevin and Goodkat make an elaborate plan to get close to both the Rabbi and the Boss. It starts with Slevin killing the son of the Boss. (This is to provoke the Boss into bringing in Goodkat, the best assassin he knows, to kill The Fairy.) For this purpose, Slevin takes the identity of Nick Fisher, who owes a debt to both bosses' bookies. (Fisher is selected as he is a significant loser in both bookies' records.) Fisher is the stranger in the airport at the beginning, murdered by Goodkat, and Slevin kills the son of the Boss, so that the Boss will hire Goodkat for revenge. Slevin fakes his own mugging, having his wallet stolen, so he cannot be properly identified, and has both bookies killed, stealing their books in the process. According to the plan discussed with the Boss, Slevin has a date with the Fairy, and kills him. This is a turning point in the film, since until then Slevin seemed friendly and naive, and not at all inclined to kill someone. Goodkat, instead of killing Slevin, kills the two bodyguards who storm in. Nick Fisher's body, which Goodkat has taken with him after murdering Fisher, is used in place of Slevin's - after Slevin and Goodkat detonate a bomb, Nick's body is burned beyond recognition. The Boss is not very satisfied, because "the job was not supposed to look like a job". Slevin and Goodkat kill a number of bodyguards, tie up the Boss and the Rabbi together, and finally Slevin takes the ultimate revenge, killing the two in the same way his father was killed, by suffocation in a plastic bag. In the end the whole story about the Boss and the Rabbi killing is told to the Police officer by another officer. It is then we realize that the cop was also involved in murdering Henry's mother. The officer on the phone also tells the detective that Slevin Kelevra is a made-up name: the name of the drugged horse in the 1979 race was "Lucky Number Slevin", and "kelevra" is Hebrew (כֶלֶב רָע) for "bad dog" (most likely a play on "Goodkat"). Slevin is hidden in the car during the conversation and he kills the cop.

Lindsey is not part of the plan, but for Slevin a pleasant separate matter while he executes his plan. However, she is an unpredictable factor: she wants to help Slevin by investigations, but takes a photo of Goodkat, and because of that, as Goodkat tells Slevin, Goodkat unfortunately has to kill her, and Slevin has to accept that. However, Slevin warns her, and has her wear a bullet-proof vest, with bag of blood over her heart to make it look like she is dead after the attempted murder, and so it happens. Later when Slevin and Lindsey meet at the airport, Goodkat arrives and tells Slevin that he can accept that Lindsey is kept alive, due to having acted in a similar manner twenty years ago with Henry. When Slevin asks him how he found out about them, Goodkat replies 'I'm a world-class assassin, fuckhead. How do you think I found out?' In an alternate ending found on the DVD, Slevin kills Lindsey at work instead of Goodkat.

Cast

• Josh Hartnett — Slevin Kelevra
• Stanley Tucci — Det. Brikowski
• Bruce Willis — Mr. Goodkat (Smith)
• Rick Bramucci — Soldier
• Kevin Chamberlin — Marty
• Oliver Davis — Henry
• Victoria Fodor — Helen
• Morgan Freeman — The Boss
• John Ghaly — NYPD Police Officer
• Sam Jaeger — Nick Fisher
• Sir Ben Kingsley — The Rabbi
• Janet Lane — Blondie
• Shira Leigh — Hottie
• Lucy Liu — Lindsey
• Mykelti Williamson — Sloe
• Dorian Missick — Elvis
• Sebastien Roberts — The guy
• Michael Rubenfeld — Yitzchok the Fairy
• Robert Forster — Murphy
• Corey Stoll — Saul
• Matthew G. Taylor — Featured

Box office

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• In its opening weekday, the film grossed a total of $7,100,000 ranking fifteenth in the United kingdom box office.^{[citation needed]}
• The domestic gross for the film totals $23,459,644 dollars, with a worldwide take of $44,500,729.^{[citation needed]}
• The budget of this film was approximately $28,000,000.^{[citation needed]}

Awards & nominations

Trivia

• On promotional material for the film, Ben Kingsley's credit included his honorary title. At first, the actor was singled out for some criticism as such things are usually omitted from professional credits. It transpired that this was a mistake by a studio executive, who was unfamiliar with the British honours system.^[1]
• The movie's violence and style earned it comparisons with the work of director Quentin Tarantino.
• An assistant to film producers Chris Roberts and Kia Jam has the name 'Nick Fischer'. His surname differs in one letter from 'Nick Fisher,' the alias Slevin Kelevra uses in the film.
• Bruce Willis and Josh Hartnett were in another movie together, Sin City, although they did not appear together onscreen.
• In Australia the film's release title is The Wrong Man. This is the title of a 1956 Alfred Hitchcock film in which the lead character has a case of mistaken identity, a theme which many Hitchcock films, as well as Lucky Number Slevin, share.^[2] In fact the main character's plight in North by Northwest is referenced in the movie as being similar to Slevin's.
• The film shares many similarities with Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo where a samurai plays two rival criminals against each other. Yojimbo was remade as Walter Hill's Last Man Standing which also stars Bruce Willis as a hit man named "Mr. Smith" in prohibition-era America. ^[3]
• The name of the film comes from an episode title of The New Shmoo. Shmoo is also referenced by Morgan Freeman in the movie.

References

1. ^ BBC News: Kingsley downplays 'Sir' furore
2. ^ The Wrong Man (2006) - Yahoo!7 Movies
3. ^ New York Times Review

See also

• Ataraxia
• Kansas city shuffle

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