Synopsis : Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven), a sleazy Las Vegas stage magician, has agreed to turn state’s evidence against prominent and powerful mob boss, Primo Sparazza (Joseph Ruskin). Primo, intent on doing away with the lousy snitch, puts out word that he will pay $1,000,000 for Buddy’s head. The offer attracts every hit man and woman within shouting distance and these deadly assassins descend on the Lake Tahoe penthouse hotel where Israel is hiding in Smokin’ Aces.
I hate it when it happens... A movie that kinda' looks promising; you expect it to be cool and hip and fun. You started to visualize Tarantino and Ritchie or Kill Bill and Snatch etc. But then it turns out to be just another one of those trying-too-hard-to-be-cool movie that the shooting and the killing has become somewhat pointless, redundant and boring.
Smokin' Aces is a cartoonish Tarantino wannabe overload filmmaking style that is just so overdone. It's like True Romance crossed with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels remade with the artistic vision of Domino. If Kill Bill was the ultimate exploitation picture, then Smokin' Aces is too-hip-for-Hollywood writer/director Joe Carnahan's depraved attempt to top it. Carnahan doesn't actually have a movie here; it's just a premise. He’s just got about half a dozen strenuously 'colorful' assassins, all converging on Buddy’s Lake Tahoe hotel room at the exact same time. So it’s not so much a motion picture as it is the last 20 minutes of True Romance dragged kicking and screaming out to the two-hour mark. And the ending tries to be more like The Usual Suspects (but fails) - and ending of mind-boggling improbability, to send us home feeling lost and confused. If this paragraph sounded like a mess or a bad mash-up of great movies - well that's just sum up what Smokin' Aces is.
Carnahan has attracted an impressive cast, but he throws so many of them at you in his opening frames it makes your head spin. He even managed to get hip-hop icons Alicia Keys and Common to make their motion picture debut. There's no doubt they look cool, but that just about it. In fact, in my opinion the most worthwhile thing about this over-orchestrated mess is Jason Bateman as corrupt lawyer Rip Reed who forgot to wear his pants. He's the only saving grace; often funny and occasionally raising the film above its level. Everybody else in this film is working too damn hard at being edgy.
Director Carnahan and his behind the camera crew have a fine eye for action and Smokin' Aces does looks good, but good looks do not make a great movie. This is a cotton candy film, not a satisfying meal at all. I enjoy shoot 'em up action and gritty dialog as much as any fan of this genre but I also want a story that will stay with me. It is fun (in an ultra-violence kind of way) but it’s not fantastic. The violence is intricately choreographed, but as over the top as a Sunday morning cartoon. It's all supposed to be ironically, blackly funny but the over sensory onslaught just produces exhaustion and the bored sense of having seen it all before.
I hate it when it happens... A movie that kinda' looks promising; you expect it to be cool and hip and fun. You started to visualize Tarantino and Ritchie or Kill Bill and Snatch etc. But then it turns out to be just another one of those trying-too-hard-to-be-cool movie that the shooting and the killing has become somewhat pointless, redundant and boring.
Smokin' Aces is a cartoonish Tarantino wannabe overload filmmaking style that is just so overdone. It's like True Romance crossed with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels remade with the artistic vision of Domino. If Kill Bill was the ultimate exploitation picture, then Smokin' Aces is too-hip-for-Hollywood writer/director Joe Carnahan's depraved attempt to top it. Carnahan doesn't actually have a movie here; it's just a premise. He’s just got about half a dozen strenuously 'colorful' assassins, all converging on Buddy’s Lake Tahoe hotel room at the exact same time. So it’s not so much a motion picture as it is the last 20 minutes of True Romance dragged kicking and screaming out to the two-hour mark. And the ending tries to be more like The Usual Suspects (but fails) - and ending of mind-boggling improbability, to send us home feeling lost and confused. If this paragraph sounded like a mess or a bad mash-up of great movies - well that's just sum up what Smokin' Aces is.
Carnahan has attracted an impressive cast, but he throws so many of them at you in his opening frames it makes your head spin. He even managed to get hip-hop icons Alicia Keys and Common to make their motion picture debut. There's no doubt they look cool, but that just about it. In fact, in my opinion the most worthwhile thing about this over-orchestrated mess is Jason Bateman as corrupt lawyer Rip Reed who forgot to wear his pants. He's the only saving grace; often funny and occasionally raising the film above its level. Everybody else in this film is working too damn hard at being edgy.
Director Carnahan and his behind the camera crew have a fine eye for action and Smokin' Aces does looks good, but good looks do not make a great movie. This is a cotton candy film, not a satisfying meal at all. I enjoy shoot 'em up action and gritty dialog as much as any fan of this genre but I also want a story that will stay with me. It is fun (in an ultra-violence kind of way) but it’s not fantastic. The violence is intricately choreographed, but as over the top as a Sunday morning cartoon. It's all supposed to be ironically, blackly funny but the over sensory onslaught just produces exhaustion and the bored sense of having seen it all before.
