Lucky Number Slevin



"The Rabbi: Your predicament reminds me of a story. Hitchcock. North by Northwest. The movie where everybody thinks Cary Grant is a man named George Kaplan, but the thing is there is no George Kaplan. It's just a made-up name, but names, even made-up ones...they can bring about quite a bit of trouble. Now, the woman in the picture with Grant, her name was, um...

Slevin: Eva Marie Saint.

The Rabbi: Oh, you know this movie.

Slevin: I know this movie."

A 2006 thriller with some elements of a stylized Film Noir, Lucky Number Slevin (released, bizarrely, as The Wrong Man in Australia) plays with viewpoint and non-linear storytelling in a similar way to The Usual Suspects or a Quentin Tarantino flick. The film features an all-star cast comprised of Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu, Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, and Bruce Willis.

The movie opens with a recount of an old horse race where one of the trainers tries to fix the race by drugging his horse. He tells his brother, who tells a friend, who tells another friend…and the cycle continues until word of the "drugstore handicap" eventually makes it back to Max, a family man looking to make a buck and put his kid through school. Max puts down a lot of money he doesn't have on the horse, thinking of the bet as a sure thing -- but during the fateful race, the horse breaks its leg on the home stretch. The bookie who took the bet goes all out to collect the debt from Max: he has his goons beat -- and kill -- Max, sends more goons to kill Max's wife, and calls in a professional to kill Max's young son when none of his other goons will do the deed.

Fast forward several years: an everyman named Slevin has just moved to New York City to stay at his buddy Nick's house after a week of misfortune. After meeting his quirky neighbor Lindsey, Slevin finds himself mistaken for Nick by thugs connected to a gangster known only as The Boss. Nick owes quite a bit of money to this man, and no one believes Slevin when he says The Boss shouldn't put him on the hook for the loan. Nick's debts complicate matters further when Slevin learns Nick also owes money to The Rabbi, a rival to The Boss who, in a very Shakespearan turn of events, lives right across the street from The Boss (in the exact same type of building, no less).

Slevin finds himself trapped in the middle of the gangsters' cold war when The Boss asks him to assassinate The Rabbi's son to cover Nick's debt -- but everyone has secrets in this Kansas City Shuffle...

Lucky Number Slevin provides examples of the following tropes:
": How'd you find out? Goodkat: I'm a world class assassin, fuckhead. How'd you think I found out?"
 * Actor Allusion:
 * Actually, That's My Assistant: When Slevin first meets the Boss.
 * Angst? What Angst?: Justified by Slevin with his "ataraxia" (which he describes as if it's a mental disorder - it's actually a philosophical concept meaning pretty much what he says it means).
 * Asian Gal with White Guy: Slevin and Lindsay
 * Ask a Stupid Question / Captain Obvious:

""What's a whoredo?" "She has sex with you for money!""
 * Asshole Victim: Nick Fisher, who seems entirely harmless at the start of the film, is revealed to have been a pederast who served eight years in prison for forcing himself on a fourteen year old cheerleader.
 * Black and Gray Morality: There are no good guys. Even Slevin
 * Bilingual Bonus: If you speak Hebrew, you know that
 * Book Ends: The film ends in the same airport terminal it started in, though it is empty the first time and full the second.
 * Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: The Rabbi hires two Badass Israeli bodyguards to protect his son from assassination.
 * Chekhov's Gun: So, so many.
 * The Chessmaster:
 * Danger Takes a Backseat:  is killed in this matter.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Slevin to a T. The Boss even mentions it: "Bet you it was that mouth that got you that [broken] nose." He claims that he has a condition that prevents him from taking anything seriously or worrying.
 * Dirty Cop:
 * Divide and Conquer
 * Downer Ending: The alternate ending on the DVD where would count.
 * Dungeon Bypass: Touched upon by
 * Dumb Muscle: Slow. He and Elvis even discuss it in a deleted scene.
 * The Ending Changes Everything:
 * Even Evil Has Standards: The mob have to bring in a specialist hitman because no one is willing to kill an innocent child.
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Boss, The Rabbi, The Fairy, and Goodkat.
 * Fan Service: Slevin in his towel for the first third of the movie.
 * Flirting Under Fire: Slevin and Lindsey build up most of their romance in this manner. Despite the fact that Slevin is on the hit list of two warring gangs, he and Lindsey find time to flirt, go to dinner (where Slevin is able to shadow a man he has been told to kill), and spend a night together.
 * Gambit Roulette:
 * Gayngster: The Fairy.
 * Genki Girl: Lindsay is adorable.
 * Guns Akimbo: Goodkat--just look at the image for this page.
 * Henway: One of The Fairy's body guards makes a couple of these in a deleted scene.

"The Fairy: Slevin: "Me.""
 * Hitman with a Heart:.
 * Improvised Weapon: The killer in the opening sequence kills a bookie by throwing a baseball. Into his eye..
 * In the Style Of: The lightning-fast dialogue with constant references to other films and tv shows can't fail to make one think of Tarantino.
 * Irony: "Dramatic Irony" is a term for when a character is speaking the truth, without realizing that he or she is speaking the truth. When you watch the movie a second time, pay attention to everything The Boss and The Rabbi say.
 * Kansas City Shuffle: Trope Namer!
 * The Killer Becomes the Killed:
 * Lucky Charms Title: marketed occasionally as Lucky # Slevin (see the picture) or Lucky Number Sㄥevin
 * Lucky Seven: Referenced in the movie title, which is a pun on the phrase and the main character's name.
 * Make It Look Like an Accident: "It can't look like a hit."
 * Manipulative Bastard: almost everyone
 * Market-Based Title: In Australia, it was released as The Wrong Man. The Portuguese title is Xeque-Mate(Checkmate).
 * Meaningful Name:
 * The Rabbi and his son, the Fairy. Why do they call him the Rabbi? Because he is a rabbi. Why do they call him the Fairy? Because he is a homosexual.
 * Mob War: Between the Boss and the Rabbi. It has escalated to the point where neither can leave his penthouse for fear of being executed by the other.
 * Mood Whiplash: Almost every scene in this movie flips between deathly serious and absolutely hilarious; few scenes fall between the two extremes, and the film makes a point out of transitioning between these moods in an abrupt manner.
 * Oh Crap: Slevin does this twice -- once when Brikowski confronts him in the men's room at the restaurant, and once when Goodkat sees him with Lindsey, . He recovers fairly quickly in both instances.
 * One-Scene Wonder: The opening story-within-a-story has plenty of these; the casting directors did a hell of a job on the side characters.
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
 * Running Gag: Slevin continually gets his nose broken.
 * Second-Person Attack: The film does this with the death of The Rabbi's bookie (who died from having a baseball thrown at his head).
 * Shirtless Scene: Josh Hartnett spends about a third of the movie in this state -- and not just shirtless.
 * Shout-Out: An "echo" variation: after Columbo gets mentioned, Slevin does a "just one more thing" to The Rabbi. North by Northwest gets a mention for the plot point of someone getting mistaken for a person
 * Mykelti Williams' character has a noticeable physical tic where he constantly has his upper lip raised. In his most famous role -- Bubba in Forrest Gump -- he had a similar tic where his lower lip was constantly extended.
 * Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes: Slevin is a Type I
 * Smart People Play Chess: Goodkat and Slevin, as they each report to The Boss.
 * Staged Shooting:
 * Straight Gay: The Fairy, for the most part (despite the name).
 * Title Drop:
 * Trapped by Gambling Debts: Although they're actually Nick's debts. Since
 * Tranquil Fury:
 * We Do Not Know Each Other:
 * Wham! Line:
 * Wham! Line:


 * Wouldn't Hurt a Child: The Boss calls in a specialist to kill a child when none of his goons would do the job.