Five Second Stare At The Movies

“Smokin’ Aces” was what I thought it was going to be (and being that this
is a football website, any time I can break out some Dennis Green, I’m
going to do it). Unfortunately the movie was also what I hoped it wouldn’t
be. Joe Carnahan, the director, is obviously skilled. If you haven’t seen
his last movie, “Narc,” you should. But in this movie he’s gone for all style
and no content. It reminds me of Guy Ritchie, who made the great “Lock,
Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” and followed it with “Snatch,” a film that
looked great, but said absolutely nothing (though Brad Pitt did rock the
shit in that movie).

The Ace in “Smokin’ Aces” is Buddy Israel, played by the always
awesome Jeremy Piven. Israel, a cheesy magician in Vegas, gets too
famous too fast and like Frank Sinatra wants to get his feet wet with the
mob. Buddy’s downward spiral leads him to the FBI, to turn in everybody,
and I do mean everybody.

Of course, that’s not a great way to make friends and when word gets out
that there’s a $1,000,000 bounty on his head, it becomes a great way to
make enemies. And what a crew we get. We’ll start with the sorta good
guys, 2 FEDS played by Ray Liotta (good as always) and Ryan Reynolds
(who, and trust me when I tell you this, was severely miscast). Then the
hit men: we have the Neo-Nazi Tremor Brothers (Chris Pine, Kevin
Durand, Maury Sterling), a trio of bounty hunters (Ben Affleck, Peter
Berg, Martin Henderson), two women (Alicia Keys, who looked amazing,
and Taraji Henson), a Latino assassin (Nestor Carbonell) and much like
the Jews in Borat, a face changer (Tommy Flanagan). So like I said, it’s a
long list.

After the million dollar hit becomes public, the movie becomes a violent
bloodfest for the last 70 minutes. So that’s it. There’s nothing else about
the movie worth talking about. Well there’s nothing about the story at
least. There are a couple of nice performances by Piven (who really
doesn’t have much to work with), Common, who does well in his scenes,
and Andy Garcia does good work as the head of the FBI. But the rest of
the cast never explore a single thing about their character, but I guess
that’s the screenplay’s fault.

Like I said, Joe Carnahan is a talented writer and director. His previous
film “Narc” was a very good movie and even “Smokin’ Aces” displayed
plenty of directing chops. A lot of people that have seen the film have
said that it’s Tarantino Lite. Now I think Tarantino, although an
extraordinary writer/director, is a cock; but, I can see their point. There is
a lot of flash in this movie, but nothing going on beyond the surface. That’
s what makes Tarantino, Tarantino, and Carnahan, Carnahan.