The Rabbi's immigrant father never mastered the word "beauty," so he said "Buick" instead — which, The Rabbi admits, caused confusion among his auditors. For his father, the greatest Buick of them all was Eva Marie Saint, especially as the mysterious Eve Kendall in Hitchcock's North By Northwest, where Cary Grant, as businessman Roger Thornhill, was running for his life because everyone thought he was another man, George Kaplan.

The Rabbi, who is also a notorious gangster, tells this anecdote to a young man named Nick Fisher, who owes The Rabbi a lot of money. But Nick Fisher isn't Nick Fisher — he's Slevin Kelevra, and he's in as much serious trouble as the innocent Roger Thornhill ever was.

Slevin (Josh Hartnett) arrives in New York City to visit his friend Nick, though by the time he arrives at his friend's apartment Nick has gone missing. Nick's neighbor, Lindsey (Lucy Liu), immediately suspects that something isn't quite right about Nick's disappearance, and becomes excited by the idea of playing amateur sleuth with Slevin. He humors Lindsey, and suggests they start their investigation after she returns from work. But in the eight hours that she is away, Slevin will have the mystery around Nick find him first.

Two arch-rival mob lords, The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman), are both looking for Nick Fisher, and both think Slevin is their man. He's hauled before both in a matter of hours by their goons and given ultimatums if he doesn't get them their cash. Neither is willing to listen to Slevin's protests that he isn't Nick, and so Slevin decides to turn this strange turn of events into a very dangerous game.

Lucky Number Slevin's plot is intricate, at times a bit too clever. There's a host of other characters involved in the action, such as a master assassin, Mr. Goodkat (Bruce Willis), who seems to bear a grudge against Slevin, knowing that he is Slevin. A police detective, Brikowski (Stanley Tucci), also gets involved, as he can't quite figure out who Slevin is.

McGuigan's film joins the ranks of Inside Man and 16 Blocks (another recent Willis vehicle) as a new breed of gritty Manhattan-based crime films reminiscent of some of the great American films from the '70s (an era that consciously informs Lucky Number Slevin's look). If the turn from sardonic comedy caper to revenge bloodbath isn't smooth, the film remains highly enjoyable and unpredictable.

For both Hartnett and Liu, whose screen careers have been fairly negligible, this is long overdue breakout film. Hartnett has never been given a chance to play a character so lightly as here, and he proves to be a very capable comic actor. Liu as well, disregarding the forced camp antics in the wretched Charlie's Angels series, is also surprisingly successful with the script's wit, and at last appears as a serious leading-lady candidate.