Monday Movie You Aught to See: Lucky Number Slevin

Welcome back to Monday Movies You Aught to See! Regardless of whether the decade ended already ended in 2009 or will end at the close of the current year, the 2000s were a wonderful period of cinema with many treasures that deserve to be remembered. Check in at Movies with Abe on Mondays for Movies You Aught to See, a look back at memorable movies from the aughts. They are posted in no particular order, and if you have a great film from the 2000s that you think merits consideration, leave a note in the comments!

Lucky Number Slevin
Directed by Paul McGuigan
Released April 7, 2006



This week's Monday Movie You Aught to See was one of my most pleasantly surprising trips to the movies back in 2006. I've never been a fan of the unemotive Josh Hartnett, and I knew next to nothing about this flick. Fortunately, it turned out to be a wildly entertaining and spectacularly clever action comedy with a smart emphasis on the latter. Featuring Bruce Willis in his token role as a dryly sarcastic assassin, this film brilliantly casts all of its actors and crafts an extraordinarily fun film with an exciting and generally inventive premise. Harnett is also at his best as a slacker-seeming fish out of water thrust into the middle of an out-of-control situation. Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley are a hoot as rival gangsters, and this film definitely features the most marvelous and wonderful performance from a very chatty and charming Lucy Liu. The diverse cast is top-notch, and the script is also a lot of fun. The trailer embedded above is on the money in terms of hinting at the film's tone, and there's little more entertaining than this film's tongue-in-cheek title. Since this is one of those movies that I imagine most people haven't seen, I'd recommend it for a nice, laidback, enjoyable treat. Have you seen it?