I just finished watching Lucky # Slevin and I actually thought it was pretty good (better than I expected anyway). But I did have a question:

Why does Slevin use the mistaken identity ploy in his plan?

Why not just pretend he's Nick Fisher and eliminate the mistaken identity aspect alltogether? The Boss and The Rabbi had never seen Nick Fisher so they wouldn't have known.

I don't see any point to it. The only thing I can think of is that he wanted to use the name "Slevin" as a reference to the horse, but that obscure reference seems unimportant to the rest of his plan.

It just seems like a completely unnecessary plot point to me. All it did was complicate an already complicated matter.

Haven't seen it since the movie theatre but I'm guessing:
A. to throw off Lucy Liu's character? Or
B. to come off as an "innocent" to the Freeman and Kingsley characters to further help him with the surprise factor?

I think it just helps set up the big twist for the audience.

You're right. It was unnecessary. Chalk it up to poor writing. I liked several aspects of the film, but there was no rhyme or reason to some of the plot points in the film besides the fact that it would "trick" the audience.

It's unnecessary for the character -- but necessary for the audience. The movie wouldn't have "worked" without that particular "con" by Slevin.

Well he couldn't pretend to be Nick Fisher in front of Lucy Liu's character since she met Fisher. So I guess it's just easier for him to keep the "con" up so to speak. And maybe it makes his character more believeable (I mean who admits they owe money to gangsters? Of coure Ben Kingsley believes he's not Nick Fisher anyways, but whatever). But on the whole it does seem to be easier to trick the audience.

Yeah, the Lucy Liu connection was about the only reason I could see for him to pretend to be Nick, but as I was watching it I kind of disregarded that as a reason because I assumed meeting Lucy Liu was kind of a happy accident for Slevin; meaning that she wasn't part of his plan and she just happened to show up and fall in love. I could be wrong though, maybe she was part of Slevin's plan from the beginning.


I did also think of one other thing after reading Jericho's reply: The Rabbi says that he can tell when someone is lying, so if Slevin knows this then he will also know that if he pretends to be Nick Fisher that The Rabbi will know he is lying...not a bad answer to my question if only there was any evidence that Slevin knew about The Rabbi's gift for sniffin gout liars -- which there isn't.

Saw this last night. Enjoyed it thoroughly.

The answer is this:

Bruce Willis says "he needed a body."

That body is Nick Fisher. At the end they put Nick's watch back on Nick's body. They wanted to leave a dead guy as the shooter so that the police don't go looking for Slevin.

It didn't work out like they planned because Tucci took a picture of Slevin and then the retired cop ID'd the name.

The more important question is why would they use the name Slevin. You would think the gangsters might remember the name of the horse that was in the incident where they "wanted to make a statement."

It's been awhile since I saw this but didn't Slevin and Willis also want to make a statement? After all didn't the whole thing hinge around the Horse race to begin with?