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'Lucky Number Slevin': Too cool, contrived to work

Paul McGuigan's ickily hip and self-enamored "Lucky Number Slevin" doesn't even deserve to be called a Quentin Tarantino wannabe.

It's more like a Guy Ritchie wannabe — the Guy Ritchie who made "Swept Away" and "Revolver."

The Weinstein Company 'Lucky Number Slevin' D The verdict: Unlucky moviegoers. Director: Paul McGuigan Starring: Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu, Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman Run time: 110 minutes Release date: April 7, 2006 Rating: R for strong violence, sexuality and language. See showtimes Meet the director Scottish director Paul McGuigan says he was astonished to attract Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman to star in his movie. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Lucky Number Slevin'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

This is the sort of high-octane slop that sticks to the wall long enough for a decent opening before dismal word-of-mouth gets around and the picture slides into video oblivion.

Ten minutes into it, there have been six or seven murders.

Twenty minutes into it, you've lost all interest in the characters, living or dead.

A half hour in, you may be headed for the door, if only to escape being the movie's next casualty.

Oh, it can be clever — in the way a precocious kid can be clever. But, like said kid, after a while, you just want it to stop.

After a prologue set in 1979, which provides some clues to the Byzantine plot, the film flash-forwards to present-day Manhattan where Slevin (Josh Hartnett) arrives at a friend's apartment. Thanks to a mugging, he's got a broken nose and no wallet. So when some thugs break in and haul him off, he has no way of proving he's not his suspiciously missing pal.

They take him to their boss, who's known only as, well, the Boss (Morgan Freeman). He's involved in a long-running feud with the Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) over matters of dead sons and debts that must be paid. The two gang leaders used to be friends, but now they glower across the street at each other from matching apartment buildings barricaded like feudal castles.

Slevin ping-pongs back and forth between them, each having ordered him to murder the other. Meanwhile, gliding behind the scenes like a master puppeteer is cool cat Bruce Willis, whose name actually is Mr. Goodkat (it's that kind of movie).

"Lucky Number Slevin" has the queasy gleam of an oil slick. Every shot feels too fussed-over, too self-conscious. A character is filmed through a glass chess piece. A row of molded blue plastic chairs slices through an empty airport corridor. It's all so, meaningful. And of course, "cool."

As the snoopy cutie next door, Lucy Liu comes off best — a nerd fantasy of a beauty who also knows which actor played Blofeld in the different 007 movies. Freeman and Kingsley seem to be enjoying themselves in a slumming kind of way. Hartnett comes off as game but miscast. He's bulked up, but still seems too boyish to play someone juggling as many balls as Slevin does.

"You are unlucky, so I am not," the Rabbi tells Slevin, adding, "The unlucky exist as a reference for the lucky."

The same could be said about the untalented and the talented.