It was not, as I thought the other da, the combination of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels that the commercials seemed to pitch it as. Or it was to the extent of there being rival mafia / gangs / crime syndicates who end up getting double crossed by a double-crosser, etc. I think I was expecting it to be edited in the same choppy Guy Ritchie style accompanied by music that is way too hip for you to listen to, balanced by traditional Jewish folksong. You know the deal, you’ve seen the films. But it wasn’t quite like that; it was far more low key (er, as low key as a film like this can get) and far more stylish.
Don’t get me wrong, it was formulaic from the beginning — like I said, you’ve got the double-crossing double crossers — but that didn’t really ruin it for me. The minute Josh Hartnett stepped out on screen, you knew he was the kid that was supposedly killed at the start of the film (ho hum); you don’t care that you know that particular thread of the ending because you’re more interested in seeing how all the other loose ends come together. He totally plays Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley like cheap violins and it’s sort of an awesome sight to behold.
I don’t really have much of a problem with violence in films; I can sit through Kill Bill and not blink and eye, and if you take a look at my DVD collection you’ll find stuff that always makes my dad ask me “What’s wrong with you? Why do you watch stuff like that?” But I find that small, controlled acts of violence are always the most brutal on screen — watch In The Bedroom, that has to be the worst bit of violence I’ve ever seen in a film — and those are the really cringe worthy bits in this movie. Yeah, there is lots of gratuitous violence (I didn’t do a body count, but let’s just say it’s fairly big) but there was something about the way it was edited that made it have a little more oomph. Like when the bookie gets killed by a baseball: you see the ball thrown, but you never see it make an impact with the bookie’s head. All you see is the incoming ball from his point of view before the screen blinks to red and the guy is dead. Eesh.
Bruce Willis looks awesome with aviators and late 70s hair, omfg. I nearly died.
Josh Hartnett continues to be the secret object of my affections. I keep this under wraps because I forget it’s there most of the time, and because … well, there is no other reason.
The funny thing is that in the end, the movie was less a sordid tail of revenge than it was a romance, at least for me. The highlight really was the developing love story between Josh Hartnett and Lucy Liu and they were seriously the cutest movie couple ever. It was very tender (for lack of a better word), very natural, and very refreshing. They were accidental and quirky and goofy. Even the suggested sex scene was shot in a way to convey that. Very nicely done, and a nice bonus considering you wouldn’t expect to find something like that in a movie like this.
The interior decorating design of the various apartments and apartment buildings was killer retro. There is no way these buildings could exist in real life, the wallpaper is far, far too heinous (and therefore glorious). It’s like what your living room wallpaper would look like if all the bad seventies wallpaper you could imagine decided to have a big fat orgy; the design in this film would be the motherfucking byproduct, no doubt.