Kansas City Shuffle

Lucky Number Slevin starts out with Bruce Willis explaining to someone what a Kansas City Shuffle is. The movie tells you up front what it is and even if it didn't you would be able to figure it out. As long as you have an iota of intelligence and also didn't doze off in the middle, not one element of this movie is surprising. Despite all that, it is still quite entertaining.

This movie has a lot of fun in the telling. In fact it has more fun in the telling that anything else. It has good actors having fun with enjoyable dialogue and an absurd plot hazy script. Most of the charm is oozed by Josh Hartnett as the unlucky Slevin. He wise cracks even when his situation seems rather dire, which really lets one know that despite it all, he is in control. The key point of these sort of bait and switch movies is not knowing what is happening and the genuine belief that what is happening to the lead guy is serious.

Here we have neither. This film is all about that sometimes optional sixth question of enquiry that we all learned in grade school. We know who, what, where, when and even why the events are taking place. We are not sure of the how it will go down and amazingly there is surprising entertainment in watching something so elaborate and absurd go down. There isn't really anyone in this movie who isn't chewing scenery like it was breakfast but I was still smiling throughout the film. This is just the kind of film you can watch, and probably re-watch again and again because it's just fun.