LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN is slick, clever, full of gimmicks and smart-alecky dialogue somewhere between ’90s post-Tarantino and some old Fred MacMurray in DOUBLE INDEMNITY type banter. All of these things can really rub you the wrong way, and the more of these qualities present at any given time the more likely the wrongness of the rubbing. For me personally the rubbing was aligned properly for most of this movie, but it often seemed on the verge of pulling a 180 at any moment. So I can definitely see how you could watch this and just hate it if you were facing the wrong direction. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Lucy Liu’
Lucky Number Slevin
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
LikePayback
Saturday, January 1st, 2005
Well in late December as I was preparing to face down the ol’ Y2K problem I got to thinking about the old Mad Max and Road Warrior movies I used to like so much, and that got me thinking about Mel Gibson, the young Australian actor who played Mad Max.
Well okay, I admit that Mel hasn’t amounted to as much as we as a society thought he would back in those days, but that doesn’t mean you can Write the man off entirely. I know what you are thinking, this dude hasn’t done shit since Mad Max so just forget about him. But sometimes even after he’s considered washed up by the general public an actor or actress is still putting out high quality type performances with little recognition.
At the video store I found one Mel Gibson film called Ransom, about a kidnapping. I figured okay this will be good, it’s probaly about a cop named Ransom, I’m thinking most likely John Ransom. Well turns out he’s not John Ransom, Ransom is just the name of the movie and not Mel Gibson. He’s not a cop either, he’s just a rich guy. But his name isn’t Ransom. So I decided to give this one a pass and pickup Payback instead.
Turns out his name is Porter in Payback but at least he’s not some rich guy. He’s not a cop either but come to think of it why the fuck does the star of an action movie have to be a cop anway? I mean nothing against McClane but let’s face it, if you had to pick one occupation of guys you want to hang out with, it’s not going to be a fucking cop, jesus. That’s why I haven’t been watching as much TV lately, I mean if I want to see cops and lawyers I’ll just answer the door. (more…)
City of Industry
Saturday, January 1st, 2005Here’s a small time crime picture for you, never got much attention as a child but grew up to be a pretty good movie. It starts out with Timothy Hutton stealing a car (very believable hotwire scene here with actual hammering of the dashboard, not just pulling some wires out) then going to pick up his partner for a job. They eventually get together their crew for a jewel heist, it consists of Timothy Hutton, his older brother Roy Egan (Harvey Keitel), Jorge (some guy I thought I recognized, but turns out he was only in a handful of movies before he died) and an obnoxious hotshot jackass named Skip, sort of a Stephen Dorff type (Stephen Dorff).
There is a pretty strong Richard Stark feel to this for a while as they prepare their heist. No funny stuff, no fancy talk, just straight business and some primal percussion type soundtrack shit to get your heart beating. Everything goes smooth actually until after the heist when this fucker Skip decides to shoot everybody, burn down the motor home and take off with the boodle. Fucking asshole! So the rest of the movie is about Roy trying to find and kill Skip, Skip trying to have Roy killed before he finds him. Very simple. That’s what I like.
One thing weird about this movie, the two main characters are named Roy and Skip. You don’t get that too often. Usually one would be John, then maybe the other one would have a fancy name like Esteban or Molochai or whatever, but not Roy and Skip. That’s pretty unusual.
I said earlier Skip was kind of a Stephen Dorff type. That’s because he’s kind of the same character, Deacon Frost, that this guy played in the classic Wesley Snipes picture BLADE. Deacon Frost was the young spikey haired showboat who thought he was better than all the other vampires, listened to lots of techno music and scared all the old timers with his young edgy mixed blood vampire methods. This is the same thing here, he thinks he’s hot shit, he plays loud, bad music while he’s driving and he stirs up trouble with all the pros like Roy and his crew. Also he has bleached blonde hair. This was 1997 though, one year before Blade, so Stephen Dorff didn’t know yet about how motherfuckers always trying to ice skate uphill. (more…)
