First Person Review: Lucky Number Slevin

Published March 20th, 2008

Warning: This “review” probably contains spoilers. Nothing you wouldn’t figure out on your own after fifteen minutes into the film. Nonetheless, if you’re dying to see this flick watch it first, then come back.

Lucky Number Slevin

They killed my daddy. Gambling mistake. And my mommy. Love don’t always beat the spread. They tried to kill me too. Sent Him to chop down the last branch. The Hitman. His black heart contained a small kernel of gold. Little boy’s brains stick like wet tar to a hitman’s twisted soul. Don’t wash off with time’s Tide. Not like the others. He holstered his gun. Nothing to say really. We drove away.

We grew older. We plotted. We got even with They. Me cause they killed my Daddy. And my Mommy. Him cause he thought it might set him free. A Man can’t kill his own shadow but he can kill one as ugly as his. Vicarious existential death. Watch one as soiled as you die at your hands. Could bring a moment of peace. An instant of relief. For a Hitman pocketing two Nines and a kernel of gold the chance is worth twenty years.

This. That. And the other thing. A Woman in this case. Moves like a Boa. Coiled graced. Cupid’s got his hands full following her around. A Spark. Then ignition. Burns like dry ice. Love nurtured by an orchestra of gun shot memories. When you play in the dirt you dream of clean sheets. She was fresh outta the drier.

Manufactured time ticks by my watch. My Daddy’s watch. We’re winding these gears. They’re caught in our hourglass. Just don’t know it. Spring goes the trap. Blood by the buckets. Pleas of mercy ignored. And then sweet blessed revenge and the foul aftertaste of repressed rage.

Tied up on a dead end street. No three point turn gonna get Them outta this one. Suffocating. Slowly. The last goodbye. The final kiss. Tastes of cellophane and crystalline clarity. I see it in their pupils. Large like an idea whose time has come. I die. Now. This moment. Right here, now, I die. Don’t get more real than that.

I live. The Hitman lives. I snuggle into my new sheets. Hitman leaves us on the cloths line. He returns to his cracked shell. A band-aid applied to a severed soul. Won’t stop the blood but it’ll let you know you tried.

Killin’ ain’t easy but it’s preferable to livin’ with a hot coal in your chest. You gotta douse that baby with Justice. The reciprocal kind. Only way to go. Forgivin’ might get you through the eye of the needle but it won’t ease the pain of a missed chance at nostalgia. You can’t forgive a man for stealin’ a memory you never got the chance to taste.

And the beauty of it all. They knew it was comin’. Had that hollow ringing in their ears from the time they shot their first virtue. You can only kill so long till that wailin’ song comes a callin’ for you. They knew it was comin’. They just didn’t know it’d be me.

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A. Moses Griffin (base64 image) Amos Moses Griffin fennis.dembo@gmail.com
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