Lucky Number Slevin

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.