| Show I A view to many kills kills' Stephen Hunter The Washington Post If youre you're feeling deprived depravity-deprived if you haven't seen enough violent death in the past few weeks after all its it's been over a month since The relief is finally Hills Have Eyes was released in hi sight That's Paul McGuigan's McGuigan s 's Lucky Number which despite its nonsensical title tu turns s sout out to be a dedicated to the proposition proposition tion that killing the old way is best It still kills that old way via pistol over and over and over and over It may be the bloodiest film since Sin Shi City and its it's so bloody that eight people are graphically murdered before the star even appears That star is the scrawny cute innocent Josh Hartnett as one poor schlemiel called who appears a typical twenty-something twenty failed to launch slacker in baggy T-shirt T and raggedy pants wool cap pulled low over eyes and ears Is he a punk musician or a computer nerd-genius nerd Well actually neither Hes He's a guy who shows up in hi a buddys buddy's New York apartment which is the wrong place at exactly the die wrong time Suddenly two very violent arrive beat the pep out ut of him and haul him before The Boss played by bythe bythe bythe the magisterial Morgan Freeman Although protests the boss isn't too interested in these protests and insists that he amateur is Nick the actual renter of the apartment And that since Nick owes him money he must either pay it back clearly impossible or earn his way out of penury by performing a service That service is a murder that is an act of retribution inthe in hi hithe inthe the service of a larger tribal battle between The Boss and The Rabbi Ben Kingsley Before this comes the movies movie's bloody preamble preamble preamble pream pream- ble which seems to have nothing to do with any any- any any- thing Its It's the story set 20 years in the past of a ayoung ayoung ayoung young man who tried to hustle the mob by betting on a fixed horse race For his hubris he was paid pad in in death as were his wife an and child all three 4 cli i documented From that t story narrated a atan airport rt by a crippled Bruce Bruc Willis to a completely different young man the movie then leaps into the present where we watch this mornings morning's extinctions also clinically documented documented docu docu- documented of a man getting into a car in a parking lot and a bookie and his henchmen being wiped out by an unseen expert in improvised weaponry including a baseball Meanwhile back at the airport Willis snaps the neck of the boy hes he's been talking to like its it's a swizzle stick in a slightly used martini glass That extinction in hi fact all of them are played as punch lines to a joke that everyone but the victim gets The movie has a jaunty even merry tone for something so blood It takes its editing rhythms from the clever Guy Ritchie of Snatch I Cont on Page 8 Cont from Page 6 and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame and not Swept Away with Madonna infamy Like Ritchie's far superior works it plays a lot of tricks with chr chronology with point of view with concealment and tion It It also bears a more than casual connection to Wicker Park which was also directed by McGuigan and also starred Hartnett Harinett Many of the same mechanisms are deployed so much so that this film could be called Wicker Park With That movie If you are not among the seven or nine who saw it was a contempo romance romance set in Chicago where Hartnett played a young businessman businessman businessman busi busi- who falls in love with witha a girl who then vanishes almost instantly a mystery that becomes an obsession for him to solve Both films arc built arou around d the same structure which begins with a cleverly filmed scenario in which we watch this and that happen and take for granted we understand what weve we've seen But that scenario is kind of the Rosetta stone of the story and it is returned to over and over and with each revisit it becomes more complex Looking at it from other vantage vantage vantage van van- tage points we learn that what seemed innocent and spontaneous spontaneous spontaneous was neither relationships emerge coalitions are revealed perpetrators barely glimpsed in inthe inthe inthe the original are identified In Wicker Park the cleverness and the gamesmanship were fun Here they're only almost fun Theres There's just too much death it comes too quickly it has no moral import it becomes ultimately ultimately ultimately ulti- ulti meaningless Its It's not that violent hyper-violent movies are axiomatically a bad thing The Wild Bunch The Godfather The Seven Samurai even Hamlet and Orson Welles's Macbeth show the foolishness of that assertion Its It's just that this particular particular particular par par- example is so laden with shootings rarely gunfights I should add mostly quick exe exe- executions executions of unarmed people who simply keel over when popped that it becomes somehow tedious The young director direct r is intoxicated with them but out in the audience were we're beginning beginning beginning begin begin- ning to squirm Lets Let's see some contests some fights some skill No were we're just watching an o execution Willis is presented in a And Bruce Willis Is Mr kind of way not the star exactly exactly exactly exact exact- ly with fewer lines than the refrigerator in a very talky movie but as a kind of deus ex machina of the plot He drops in every few seconds to whack somebody then disappears into the shadows looking as glum as the guy who delivers the tax assessments There are some pleasures Both Freeman and Kingsley are charismatic performers each the master of a posse that reflects a specific ethnic heritage heritage heritage her her- each creates a spell when on onscreen on Lucy Liu whose character happens to live across the hall from Nick and thereby meets and falls for and accompanies accompanies accompanies through many of his adventures is a delight Its It's nice to see her in hi a film where she's not used as a or a litigation-crazed litigation lawyer but ju just t as a really pretty bright young woman Hartnett has been better The revelation of his character who he is his role in these seemingly incoherent events is the crux of the film and he registers wanly Even though hes he's in 90 percent of the scenes the movie disguises his motives so efficiently that for too long a time he seems just like a drifter who's wandered on onstage stage Possibly you notice that hes he's surprisingly unruffled by the astonishing events that overtake b Win him m but he never turns dynamic ic until very very late and by that time hes he's lost the picture to stoic Willis pert Liu kingly Kingsley and majestic Freeman Lucky Number minutes is rated R for violence and profanity |
