If you only see one quirky crime thriller in which seemingly impenetrable plot developments and odd quirks only hint at the intricate underlying con in a multipolar conflict, see Inside Man. If you see two... well, Lucky Number Slevin is not without charm.
Inside Man is summarized by Clive Owen's opening narration in which he promises to pull off the perfect bank heist... he then makes hostages indistinguishable from robbers, while Denzel Washington must deal with the robbers, antsy SWAT teams, and the bank's own intrigue. Lucky Number Slevin is a story about mistaken identity forcing a man into deals with mobsters over assassination for hire and gambling debts, and neighbors who just need to borrow a cup of sugar at the wrong time.
Both are filmed in an interesting visual style, and both films absorbed me into the growing confusion of the unfolding story, although less so for Lucky Number Slevin, which really didn't hook me until maybe the last third of the film. The problem I felt was that L#S spends so much time introducing Slevin's problem through a series of meetings and punches to the stomach that, while I certainly enjoy seeing Josh Hartnett get punched in the stomach (he was in Pearl Harbor) the film didn't pull me in until I saw Slevin Kelevra actually do something.
Inside Man is captivating in large part because it features a tremendous cast that gives these characters a lot of implied depth. The main confrontation of this film is Denzel Washington facing on one side Clive Owen, and on the other Jodie Foster, any of whom is fascinating whenever they're allowed to get a little dirty, and the muddying waters of this film's moral perspective are perfect for that. Around them are Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, and the ever fascinating Chiwetel Ejiofor, and when you add to that the richness of the diverse cast of hostages, Spike Lee has created an entire world full of real people whose existence extends far beyond the boundaries of the story he's chosen to tell, as do certain threads of the plot.
This contrasts with the real problem of Lucky Number Slevin. The supporting cast includes Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley, and Stanley Tucci as Slevin's three antagonists, and a collection of amusing henchmen. Bruce Willis is effectively taciturn, and needs to be until the final unravelling of the plot, but everybody else spends the whole movie exchanging witty rapier thrusts and amusing musings, which shows a lot of promise, but sadly fails to entertain nearly as much as the cast thinks it does. The problem is the characters are all so thin, as well as intentionally mysterious, that it never has enough weight to make me believe it. Freeman, Tucci, and Kingsley manage to pull this off and their scenes with Hartnett are more interesting for it, but the real problem is the scenes with Lucy Liu and Josh Hartnett, since neither has the gravitas to pull off a script that's straining for self-conscious humor and noir at the same time. Every scene works briefly, but each goes too long to avoid turning into some writer's exercise on how long they can keep a technique going, especially Liu and Hartnett's scenes, which begin simultaneously guarded and flirtatious and end with a neon sign flashing "Witty Dialogue" so the audience knows when to chuckle appreciatively.
What's left in Lucky Number Slevin is the intricate underlying con, which Bruce Willis coyly refers to as the Kansas City Shuffle, defined differently everytime, but the characters can't fill it out. Inside Man is the opposite, as the film and the heist are a snapshot of a larger world and a larger time frame. I was intrigued by both, but Inside Man is the one I'd watch again, loose ends and all. One caveat, both struck me as films better enjoyed when you only put the clues together at the end with the benefit of hindsight, and just get pulled along with Kelevra (Hartnett) and Frazier (Washington), but more discerning viewers may piece this together a lot quicker than I did.
(This was a review I posted on my other blog at Rotten Tomatoes, along with reviews of almost every other 2006 release I've seen.)
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