Watched this movie today. It was a interesting, but the twist at the ending was easily seen half way through the movie, though the rabbit hole went much deeper than I had originally imagined.
Official Site
IMDb: 7.5/10 (8,074 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: C+ / Yahoo! Users: B
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 50% / Average Rating: 5.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Spoilers: (Show)
The movie starts off with Bruce Willis meeting some guy at some station and starts telling a story about a horse race and how it was supposed to be a fixed game, but some guy loses his entire family because of this. The Bruce Willis starts talking about the Kansas City Shuffle and kills the guy.
Then we get to Josh Hartnett and how he just seemed unlucky, wanted by 2 different crime lords. He said visiting a friend, but the friend is missing. He also starts a relationship with the girl next door.
So to make the story short, the Boss’s son was shot and he believes the Rabbi killed him. He hires Good Cat (Bruce Willis) to kill the Rabbi’s son. Good Cat says he needs a body and he chooses Nick Fisher. However Slevin (Josh Hartnett) gets mistakened as Nick Fisher and the Boss tells him that he’d cancel out his $96,000 debt if he does a small favor and kill the Rabbi’s gay son.
Later, the Rabbi requests for Nick Fisher also and tells him to pay back the $33,000 he owes.
The story gets more interesting when the cops get involved trying to figure out who Slevin is and what his connection is with the 2 different crime lords.
You also find out that Good Cat is play both sides of the game. He’s offering the Rabbi to pay him twice the Boss and he won’t kill his son and kill the Boss in return.
Later you find out that Good Cat was planning to kill both Nick Fisher and the Rabbi’s gay son to make it look like lover’s quarrel.
So the plan goes smoothly and Slevin gets a date with the Rabbi’s gay son and he meets up at his place and kills him. Good cat appears and shoots the Rabbi’s gay son in the head to finalize the death. Slevin leaves and Good Cat waits for the Rabbi’s gay son’s body guards to arrive and kills them too. Slevin brings up the body of the man Good Cat kills in the beginning of the movie and that turns out to be Nick Fisher. Turns out Slevin and Good Cat were a team and they blow the joint up.
They then return to the Boss and the Rabbi and manage to do a Kansis City Shuffle on them. They get tied up and Slevin starts explaining who he is. He was the kid of the man who’s entire family was killed. Good Cat was hired to kill the kid, but didn’t kill him at the end and ended up watching him grow up.
Now he gets his revenge on the guys who set his family up. I knew Slevin was the kid, but I didn’t exactly know about the crime bosses being the ones who killed his family. What was more interesting is that it turns out the detective was the one who shot his mom way back then. However, Slevin doesn’t explain anything to the cop which was a bit weird. I’m assuming that he knew the cop found out about him, but I’m not exactly sure how he knew about that.
In the end, Good Cat kills the next door girl because she took a picture of him on her cell phone. But Slevin warns her about it and she’s okay. But Good Cat knew about that from the beginning and wishes them good luck as they part.
In the beginning of the movie, when Good Cat was telling the story, he was Charlie Chaplin coming in 3rd in a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest was a story. I’ve heard this many times and decided to verify if it’s true. According to Snopes, it apparently is true: Legend has it that Chaplin himself once entered — and lost — one of these competitions. It is usually said the contest was held in Monte Carlo or Switzerland, and that he came in second or third.
