Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

34 10,000 B.C.
55 Baby Mama
62 Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The
36 College Road Trip
xx Dark Knight, The
31 Deception
41 Drillbit Taylor
57 Forbidden Kingdom, The
67 Forgetting Sarah Marshall
54 Get Smart
49 Hancock
34 Happening, The
57 Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
xx Hellboy II: The Golden Army
71 Horton Hears a Who!
61 Incredible Hulk, The
65 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
79 Iron Man
35 Jumper
73 Kung Fu Panda
24 Love Guru, The
37 Made of Honor
xx Mamma Mia!
58 Mist, The
48 National Treasure: Book of Secrets
55 Nim's Island
22 Postal
69 Redbelt
44 Ruins, The
53 Sex and the City: The Movie
76 Shine a Light
37 Shutter
37 Speed Racer
61 Stop Loss
47 Strangers, The
55 Street Kings
33 Superhero Movie
93 WALL-E
64 Wanted
36 What Happens in Vegas...
54 You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

83 Alexandra
80 Band's Visit, The
76 Beauty in Trouble
47 Bella
80 Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
59 Blind Mountain
55 Bra Boys
60 Brick Lane
70 Caramel
49 Children of Huang Shi, The
83 Chop Shop
83 Chris & Don. A Love Story
78 Counterfeiters, The
52 Diminished Capacity
64 Dreams with Sharp Teeth
73 Duchess of Langeais, The
84 Edge of Heaven, The
52 Elsa & Fred
79 Encounters at the End of the World
62 Expired
64 Fall, The
51 Finding Amanda
57 Flawless
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
63 Foot Fist Way, The
60 Fugitive Pieces
45 Full Grown Men
55 Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts
69 Go-Getter, The
74 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
63 Gunnin for that #1 Spot
68 Heartbeat Detector
34 Holding Trevor
68 Honeydripper
55 Irina Palm
69 Jellyfish
60 Jihad for Love, A
68 Kabluey
62 Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
82 Last Mistress, The
38 Life Before Her Eyes, The
70 Love Songs
64 Married Life
30 Meet Bill
33 Miss Conception
53 Mister Lonely
75 Mongol
52 Mother of Tears, The
52 My Blueberry Nights
71 My Brother Is an Only Child
84 My Winnipeg
61 On the Rumba River
69 Operation Filmmaker
61 OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies
83 Paranoid Park
72 Priceless
51 Promotion, The
55 Quid Pro Quo
29 Red Roses and Petrol
79 Reprise
71 Roman de gare
56 Sangre de mi sangre
51 Savage Grace
76 Shotgun Stories
66 Son of Rambow
70 Standard Operating Procedure
62 Stuck
72 Surfwise
81 Tell No One
56 Then She Found Me
xx Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
71 To the Limit
54 Tracey Fragments, The
70 Trumbo
72 Tuya's Marriage
83 U2 3D
56 Unknown Woman
86 Up the Yangtze
79 Visitor, The
62 Wackness, The
37 War, Inc.
64 Water Lilies
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
55 Without the King
72 Woman on the Beach
64 XXY
67 Year My Parents Went on Vacation, The
75 Young@Heart

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Lucky Number Slevin
The Weinstein Company


8.2

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 80 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for strong violence, sexuality and language

Starring Josh Hartnett, Stanley Tucci, Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu, Kevin Chamberlin, and Oliver Davis

Lucky Number Slevin is a thriller that twists and turns its way through an underworld of crime and revenge. Set in New York City, a case of mistaken identity lands Slevin (Hartnett) into the middle of a war being plotted by two of the city's most rival crime bosses. (The Weinstein Company)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Jason Smilovic
DIRECTED BY:	Paul McGuigan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: September 12, 2006 Theatrical: April 7, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	109 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Hartnett has been stuck in the young-adult heartthrob mode for some time now, but this comic thriller may launch him into meatier fare.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The talk is witty, the twists are ingenious, the look and the mood are drop-dead.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Some of what occurs in Lucky Number Slevin is done with a wink and a nod, although McGuinan (á là Tarantino) doesn't skimp on the gore.

USA Today Claudia Puig

This pop-culture-infused mistaken-identity thriller ultimately grabs hold and beguiles, though its convoluted plot takes a while to get going.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Smilovic's rapid-fire, Tarantino-esque dialogue is consistently razor-sharp, and the elaborate set design - which leans heavily towards shiny, riotously patterned wallpaper - is an eyeball-jangling blast.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Lucky Number Slevin would be too clever for its own good if it weren't so ... darn clever. This violent flick is not in the same league as "The Sting," which has my vote for the cleverest winding road toward a happy ending in screenwriting history, but it contains nearly as deft a con job as that 1973 film.

San Francisco Chronicle Neva Chonin

For the most part, though, it works as a clever thriller that entertains through purposeful misdirection.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The film is stylish as hell with sharp dialogue, a tongue-in-cheek plot and visual and editing razzle-dazzle.

Time Richard Schickel

The story never runs completely off the rails and is, in any event, just a pretext for a lot of very sharp badinage by Jason Smilovic--a screenwriter who would have been at home writing for Cary Grant--for yards of terrific movie acting and for some well-timed direction by Paul McGuigan.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

A thriller that holds less interest - and less water - the more it reveals about what's actually going on.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

They almost got it really right with Lucky Number Slevin, but they also almost got it horribly wrong.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The most original thing about Lucky Number Slevin is that it lets Lucy Liu play a screwball heroine.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

With its diabolical ending, this is the movie equivalent of a crossword puzzle: fun, clever, and disposable.

Film Threat Jeremy Mathews

Unfortunately, director Paul McGuigan tries to make it all serious at the end, and this isn't the kind of story that should be taken seriously.

Variety Justin Chang

Thoroughly -- and sometimes justifiably -- infatuated with its own cleverness, this mistaken-identity thriller delights in narrative complication and Tarantino-esque self-awareness.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

From its sly, amused performances to its surreal comic book gloss to its artfully nervous camerawork, Lucky Number Slevin sustains the blasé tone and look of a smart-aleck thriller that buries its heart under layers of attitude.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

It's all superficially enjoyable, right up to the point where the big picture starts coming into focus and it's not worth looking anymore.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

It's the soulless quality of so many films that value devious plots, smug deception and quirky personality traits over actual story and character.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Features lots of cool dialogue but doesn't provide much of a movie in which to showcase it.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Declarative sentences are as scarce as detectable feelings in this stylish, emptyish thriller -- it's Tarantino with the vital juices left out.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

There's just too much death, it comes too quickly, it has no moral import, it becomes ultimately meaningless. It's not that hyper-violent movies are axiomatically a bad thing, it's just that this particular example is so laden with shootings that it becomes somehow tedious.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Too clever by half. It's the worst kind of con: It tells us it's a con, so we don't even have the consolation of being led down the garden path.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Lucky Number Slevin is a bag of nerves. Everything here is too much. The older the actors, the saltier the ham of their performances.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

If "Pulp Fiction" impregnated "The Usual Suspects," the spawn would look a lot like Lucky Number Slevin. Great genes, but you keep wondering when the kid is going to grow up and find an identity of his own.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Cursed--but ironically!--with stomach-churning '60s decor, Slevin might round off in Park Chanwook country, but the lingering sense of it is as an amusement park for the actors, who are as infectiously overjoyed for the bouncy badinage as preschoolers on Christmas morning. Like tired parents, our enjoyment is primarily vicarious.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A smug, deliberately convoluted mix tape of Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Guy Ritchie and Hitchcock with (mostly) a cast to die for, Lucky Number Slevin is great fun for, say, 20 minutes.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Danny Aiello and Robert Forster also turn up in tiny roles that further serve to distract attention from the real business at hand.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Comes packed with so many plot twists and reversals, there's barely any room left over for a story: The movie is all clever gotchas and hoodwinks, without any substance to go along with them.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

Lucky Number Slevin is an attempted cinematic sleight-of-hand that has its moments, but is finally just plain annoying, wearing its influences too broadly on its sleeve.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Overwritten, over-designed, and too clever by 200 percent, the film does offer the pleasure of actors enjoying themselves.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

With its wiry twists and turns, ends up buckling under the weight of its own cleverness.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The proverbial seems awfully pale here. Fans of Q.T. will find it patently derivative. Fans of Elmore will find it, well, El-less.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The pretzeled syntax is fun for a while. But as the holes are filled in, the film stands revealed as just another vacuous revenge picture. It shrinks your perception of what movies can do.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Another drearily sadistic and pointless crime thriller.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Is Josh Hartnett attracted to cinematic bombs, or do movies merely self-destruct once he signs on as the leading man?

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Weinstein Co. honchos Bob and Harvey are chasing some of the old "Pulp Fiction" magic--and failing not only miserably, but kind of disgustingly.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 80 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Apocalypse Brown gave it a2:
What a poor imitation of 'Usual Suspects'! For some of the e mailers who said this was an intelligent film have insulted intelligence itself. There were several plot flaws which were unforgivable. Like Willis allowing Harnett to live when Willis was supposed to be a international killer was BS! Then the obvious clues that Harnett was out for revenge not being noticed by anyone is bollocks. Lastly the acting was as wooden as a forest, all round. Read a paper for intellect, not watch this!

Andrew Y. gave it a9:
I'm not sure why the critics were so harsh about this movie. For the average movie-goer, this is a solid film, which i enjoyed immensely.

Jim A. gave it a10:
A perfect movie which contains everything: adventure fun and a lot of surprises! I think that critics where unfair!!!!

G. G. gave it a9:
I don't know what the official "critics" where smoking when they gave this film a worse rating than something like 300 or Disturbia, but I guess the intellect required to understand these texts is on par with the intellect required to be a "Professional Film Critic." I'm actually astounded some of the lower ratings this film has been given aren't accompanied by reviews resembling "it sucked lots."

Reid F. gave it a7:
This movie suffered from having a terrible name, but really, it is quite a good film with several interesting plot twists and outstanding performances from a stellar cast that includes Josh Hartnett, Lucy Liu, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, and Ben Kingsley.

Ben R gave it an8:
Critics got it totally wrong. This was a very good film for a thriller, crime drama. Hartnett is a bit stiff but the rest of the cast is top notch and well acted. Whether or not you figured it out by the end is immaterial to a very nice ride. I think critics hate a movie that they THINK they figured out when they get it wrong.

Mark S. gave it a9:
This is one of those movies that is a benchmark for how clueless reviewers can be.

Lucky Number Slevin The Weinstein Company

Lucky Number Slevin
The Weinstein Company