JULIE ONI
Staff Writer
The story of Paul McGuigan’s new film “Lucky Number Slevin” begins and ends in blue. Don’t be alarmed, this is the good kind of blue. The Picasso-period artistic masterpiece kind. Brilliant, genius azure.
Two of the most crucial scenes in the film take place in a bright white train station filled with intense blue chairs. These scenes frame an account of mistrust, twists and turn-arounds that are too intriguing to make you blue.
In the beginning, this room is nearly empty, with only three people inside. But this emptiness is strategic success. The audience wouldn’t be as intoned to the “blue that be” if it weren’t for the absence of bodies in each seat.
What happens among these empty chairs when no one is watching, is unbelievable information-leaking. Pay attention; read between the lines of cobalt IKEA-esque products. In the end, once more people have become involved in the story, the same room is packed full of people in these chairs. Blood and betrayal have joined the brightness of before with dark, death-like density.
What is better, to be alone or surrounded by people who want nothing but to see you dead? Well, as the story goes, to be alone (blue) is to necessitate retribution for the desires of these opponents.
The cast is such a combination that only comes around once in a blue moon: Josh Hartnett plays Slevin, a young man who appears to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the story begins, he is staying in the apartment of his friend Nick Fisher, who has disappeared into the blue (just wait, there’s more).
Lindsey (Lucy Liu), the nosy crime-solving neighbor, wants to play Clue. She is concerned about good ole Nick, and somewhat suspicious of his apartment’s new inhabitant who has just appeared out of the blue. She is also just excited to have such a novelty occur right at home. Should she be so suspicious, or is this fate? Or … is she secretly involved in the scheme and simply trying to mask the blue beneath?
Suspicion abounds. Before he knows it, Slevin unwillingly becomes wrapped up in the middle of a battle between The Boss (Morgan Freeman) and The Rabbi (Sir Ben Kingsley), involving murder, mistaken identity, and ultimate revenge.
Though he tells his chasers that they have mistaken him for someone else, his words do no good. He is forced to either become involved or eternally absent from the earth. Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis), who appears to be the one behind the whole scheme, is on both sides of the boat. He can see the blue water beneath that no one else is positioned to observe. But this power comes with the possibility of manipulation. Goodkat also appears to be out to get Slevin, but why? If Slevin’s identity has been mistaken by The Boss and The Rabbi, why should Mr. Goodkat desire to dispose of him? Does he really know Slevin at all?
“Sometimes,” says Mr. Goodkat at one point, “there’s more to life than just living.” Maybe, with all the blue of this story, there is hope: Friendship, love and determination run free.
This artistic story is creatively crafted from start to finish.
Even the nosy neighbor Lindsey realizes the beauty in the breakdown. “Neighbors borrowing sugar is like something from a Norman Rockwell painting,” she says (a little too “Annie Hall” for me, but she makes a good point).
The small, simple things beautify the bloody, brutal blue of the story, creating a refreshing royal worth the wait. This is why they called it a “Picasso Period” — it doesn’t last forever.
The balance is beautiful.
04-13-2006
