60
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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
The New Yorker by 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.
75
ReelViews by 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.
60
Thoroughly -- and sometimes justifiably -- infatuated with its own cleverness, this mistaken-identity thriller delights in narrative complication and Tarantino-esque self-awareness.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
The film is stylish as hell with sharp dialogue, a tongue-in-cheek plot and visual and editing razzle-dazzle.
50
Village Voice by 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.
67
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
A thriller that holds less interest - and less water - the more it reveals about what's actually going on.
50
Rolling Stone by 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.
70
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.
58
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.