Lucky Number Slevin Press Roundtable March 23, 2006 See Review Written By Frank J. Avella

Lucky Filmgoers Given Slevin

Josh Hartnett and Morgan Freeman
Lucky Number Slevin
Photo Courtesy of The Weinstein Company

Lucky Number Slevin is a clever and audacious new indie film directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu, Sir Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis and Stanley Tucci. What brought these titanic talents together for such a small but potent film?

It all began with a terrific script. No, really. According to all the key players involved. Apparently, Jason Smilovic wrote a fantastic story “about a guy who was just incredibly unlucky.” The script made the rounds until it landed in the lucky hands of Gangster #1 director, Paul McGuigan, who had just completed the studio-policed Wicker Man with Josh Hartnett. Although the film wasn’t what they had hoped it could be, the two bonded. “We had similar upbringings,” Hartnett explains, “even though one of us grew up in Minnesota, the other in Scotland.”

Helmer McGuigan says he wanted to “give Josh a role he deserves... complex, demanding, more than just a hunky guy.” Hartnett was eager to shed his Hollywood-ness and dive into “more interesting and stranger material.” He candidly muses: “If you want to be a cog in the studio system, you can...I wanted to be known as an actor instead of just a pretty face. I want a career that lasts decades, not just a few years.”

For Hartnett, he feels this is the best time in his career thus far. He certainly appears content and gives no indication of movie star ego or matinee idol behavior. It was a happy revelation that he came across as an intelligent, devoted and dedicated craftsman.

Next to sign on to sit at the Slevin table was Lucy Liu in the part of Lindsey, originally written for a “perky blonde.” Lindsey soon morphed into a fast-talking, multi-dimensional character. Liu found it refreshing to play a “non-iconic role, someone more human than superhuman.”--something she’s rarely had the chance to do since the groundbreaking Ally McBeal left the airwaves. She credits Ally creator and writer David E. Kelley for starting a trend where talent mattered more than ethnicity in casting.

Liu had to learn how to be “Asian” for a host of mainstream projects that had her pigeon-holed. Smilovic, like Kelley, wrote specific to Liu’s talent’s not her ethnicity. And to a sweet, almost wacky sex appeal. Liu and Hartnett are dynamic together and McGuigan captures the exciting sparks onscreen.

In addition to being a visual stylist, McGuigan managed to find a way to work seemingly-effortlessly with Oscar titans Morgan Freeman and Sir Ben Kingsley who he says “raise your game as a director.” The results are electrifying, especially in the climactic sequence when they come together...along with Hartnett, who was “awed and a bit intimidated” and likens working with them to going to a Master Class in acting. On Sir Ben, Hartnett shares: “He was trying all kinds of different things, constantly refining...”

Kingsley is quite a presence, at once Mount Rushmore-esque and unassuming.

Kingsley is proud of his ‘Spencer Tracy approach’ to acting where he is constantly asking himself and his fellow actors what they need from him.

He goes on the describe the hush that fell onset when the final scene was being shot: “I was strapped in...back-to-back with Morgan, and since I couldn’t move a great deal, but I could move my head...I saw Bruce Willis duck behind a pillar...He didn’t want to disturb, but he’d come in to watch the shooting of that scene. He said, ‘I want to be here.’ That’s very bonding on a film set.”

Kingsley describes his acting opposite Oscar luminary Freeman as “Great tennis...A good take is like a volley, a long volley of shots where the audience stops breathing, you know just back-and-forth, back-and-forth.”

When asked about the violence in the film (27 deaths) and the reason for taking on criminal parts (Sexy Beast, Slevin) he mentions the attraction that writers and audiences have to gangster films and then shares a hypothesis: “We have this fascination as an audience to explore the dark side that maybe we don’t normally get to explore, in the rather healthy, moderate society we live in.”

Speaking to the outstanding choices and amazing performances of late, Sir Ben describes having a sense of urgency that pushes him: “This sense of urgency has taken priority somehow over most of the other things in my life. It’s become a craft through which I can be me, and I can’t imagine any other way of life through which I can be me, that I could exercise my function for which God has put me on this earth for. As I get older, it seems to be finding its place in a much more comfortable way. I think I was first driven by that awful combination of grandiose narcissism, and lack of self-worth that seems to define what an actor is. I seem to be moving away from that neurosis now, and hopefully am moving towards being a creative man. There’s always, always a sense of urgency, and a need to be heard in a very specific way.”

In Lucky Number Slevin, audiences will feel that sense of urgency...and feel lucky they are a part of it.