Smokin' Aces (2007)
The Cast
Ryan Reynolds ... Richard Messner
Ray Liotta ... Donald Carruthers
Joseph Ruskin ... Primo Sparazza
Alex Rocco ... Serna
Wayne Newton ... Himself
Jeremy Piven ... Buddy 'Aces' Israel
Ben Affleck ... Jack Dupree
Peter Berg ... "Pistol" Pete Deeks
Martin Henderson ... Hollis Elmore
Common ... Sir Ivy
Andy Garcia ... Stanley Locke
Alicia Keys ... Georgia Skye
Nestor Carbonell ... Pasquale Acosta "S.A. Gerald Diego"
Chris Pine ... Darwin Tremor
Kevin Durand ... Jeeves Tremor
Maury Sterling ... Lester Tremor
Tommy Flanagan ... Lazlo Soot
Curtis Armstrong ... Morris Mecklen
Vladimir Kulich ... The Swede
Joel Edgerton ... Hugo Croop
David Proval ... Victor "Baby Buzz" Padiche
Jason Bateman ... Rip Reed
Matthew Fox ... Bill
Generally speaking, I enjoy movies that employ a swerve ending. You know the kind, like The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense, where the answer has been right in front of you the whole time and once it's revealed to you, you kind of smack your forehead and exclaim "Ohmigod wow," or whatever. There are varying degrees of cheats that some filmmakers employ to achieve this same effect, without putting all the hard work into the rest of the story. Some films pull it off convincingly, and others leave you in a fit of anger, wondering why you just sat through two hours of mindless violence and flashy camerawork when one of the characters could have just raised his hand and said "Uh, that guy is actually the other guy." Smokin' Aces is one of those movies.
The last film that I saw that was both written and directed by Joe Carnahan was the supremely gritty and awesome Narc, so I was kind of hoping to get a similar experience out of this movie. Smokin' Aces is pretty much the antithesis of Narc, what with its bloated cast of recognisable faces and super-stylized violence. The storyline is basically that Buddy "Aces" Israel (Piven) is a world famous magician and also fairly high up in some mafia family. Turns out the FBI has offered Israel a deal and there are agents en route to take him into custody, aided by bail bondsman Jack Dupree (Affleck). Israel accepts the deal, and so puts into play a counter-effort by the mobsters, with them offering a $1 million bounty on Israel's heart to anyone that wants to take up the challenge. This leads to a massive influx of hitmen to the Lake Tahoe hotel that Israel is holed up in, and so sets into play a twisting and ultimately pointless tale of backstabbing and snitchery.
Looking at that huge cast list, there's a fair number of actors in there that I've professed to be a fan of at one point or another. Until Piven sold out and became an asshole, I was a fan of his usual underrated comedic sidekick roles. There's so much character introduction going on in Aces that any of the attempted character development in the already established central characters comes across as an attempt to flesh out the drama in the performances, which is just pointless about a quarter of the way through. Henceforth, everything Israel does throughout the movie after the opening half an hour plot description just feels like a strung out crackhead hitting rock bottom and dragging everything around him down as well.
I will say that of all the performances in the film, the one that I enjoyed most of all was Jason Bateman's inspired five minutes onscreen. Without those five minutes, I'd literally have nothing nice to say about the characters in the film. The action scenes are generally just quick cuts and massive gunfire, with FBI agents acting nothing like they would have been trained to act in real life. I know it's a movie and all, but nothing makes fucking sense about shooting your gun at the broad side of a building where a sniper is picking off your fellow agents from.
There's not much to get excited about with Smokin' Aces at all. From poorly thought out stunt casting (Alicia Keys and Common, why?) to senseless violence and bloodshed, to inbred hick hitmen, there is no reason to watch the movie. I'm sure someone on Youtube has Bateman's performance uploaded, so yeah watch that. The whole stupid convoluted storyline ends up as a big cheat and you just feel annoyed that you wasted a couple hours of your life watching this meandering bullshit when you could've been painting a self-portrait or building a house.
1.5 / 5