Lucky Number Slevin [HD DVD]

The first 15 minutes are funny. Then it gets boring because most of the time the actors are just talking. Besides the jokes are repetitive.

Lucky Number Slevin is like a kid who tries to ape his "cooler" elder brother, not realizing he has good qualities of his own. He ends up ignoring those qualities that would differentiate him from his older sibling in his pursuit to follow the footsteps, which he fails miserably.

Let's get it out of the way. This Josh Hartnett vehicle is a trying hard Tarantino/Nolan movie and it doesn't have the wit and craftiness of both. The dialogues are achingly corny and trite which reminds one of The Sphinx's lines in "Mystery Men". It's trying hard to be funny and tries to inject geek-cred by tossing in obscure references, in my mind, at inopportune times. It's as if the writer Jason Smilovic tries to put in all he knows or showing off his arcane knowledge of pop culture.

Structure-wise, despite all the twists, it's all predictable. The opening sequence clearly telegraphs the denouement. After that, we have faux-comedic first half that's incongruous with the grim and dark resolution.

The redeeming value in Lucky Number Slevin is the strong visual style in art direction and production design. That alone made me want to listen to the director's commentary. Interestingly he's candid about his work and its faults. From that honesty alone, it saved this DVD from the lowest rating.

Buy it if you're impressed by the art direction and technical aspects of the film. Don't buy it if you're expecting insights on storytelling, dialogue writing or fresh plotting.

Good movie, but format that Amazon claims as DTS Surround in incorrect. When I received my copy it was Dolby 5.1. Not a huge deal, but I prefer DTS and expect it when its advertised.

I won't repeat the story since the reviews before mine did a wonderful job of that. I just want to say, I loved this movie! It was one surprise after another and brought back my faith in good, clever, innovative movies again. With all the sequels and remakes, it's so refreshing to find something completely different! This one is well worth the viewing time. You'll never guess the ending!

I got this video to supplement my collection of HDDVD movies.
I did not know much about the movie, other than it had a decent cast in Morgan Freeman, Sir Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis, Josh Hartnett, and Lucy Liu.

I don't read movie synopsis, so that at least there MAY be a surprise for me.

This movie did not disappoint.

It started off with a bang and then rolled into a nice tale unusual for today's Hollywood.

It won't disappoint!