What Hath Tarantino Wrought?

Sometimes you see a movie because of marketing, or because of the cast, or because of awards, or because of the subject matter. Sometimes you see a movie because you need to kill a couple of hours and it's the only film that's playing time fits your schedule.

That's the reason I saw Lucky Number Slevin. Any film that includes cute typographical work in the title (using an upside-down 7 instead of an "L" in the word Slevin) would ordinarily be a red-flag.

This movie is yet another in a long line of bad Tarantino rip-offs. We have the usual: glib gangsters, lots of pop-culture trivia (characters debate who the best James Bond was, and we actually hear the plot of North by Northwest, which reminds us how much better that movie is that this one), a big body-count, disaffected hit men, and lots of attitude. What this film is missing is a sense of wit and flair. Instead, it is merely depressing. I hated almost all of the characters, even the ones I'm supposed to root for. None of the characters seem to feel anything, and simply exist in a "cool" screenplay. Also, it's not funny, though it seems to think so. We hear a line, "Why is he called The Rabbi?" "Because he's a rabbi" more than once, and it wasn't funny the first time.