Ryan Chartrand“Smokin’ Aces” is a “smokin’ hot” 2007 action flick in the sense that, like smoke, it will fade away very quickly. It has enough testosterone built into it, however, to deem it the ultimate Friday night “guy movie,” and the ultimate antithesis to “The Notebook” for the ladies.
Joe Carnahan, director and writer of “Smokin’ Aces,” is clearly a Quentin Tarantino fan, and I stress the word “fan.” The sadistic humor and stylish executions are certainly present, but are not nearly as effectively executed.
Carnahan’s carnage fest, while an enjoyable bloodbath for any male who likes big guns, is ridden with enough problems from the beginning to make the rest no more than cinematic anarchy.
“Smokin’ Aces” begins by grabbing an eclectic handful of characters and throwing them at a wall hoping some will stick, while others fall to the ground dead within 10 minutes. The first 30 minutes is entirely background information in an attempt to welcome you into a charming world of murder, cocaine and prostitutes. Carnahan should have stood outside handing out novellas for everyone to read before watching the film. Instead, he just tries to confuse you.
Once half of the characters suddenly die, the gist of the story is set in place. A $1 million bounty has been placed on the head of a renowned magician named Buddy “Aces” Israel, played by Jeremy Piven, who also has some complicated ties with the mafia. An eclectic group of hit men (and women) hear of the job and so begins a rat race to kill Aces, who has locked himself in a hotel suite with one too many grams of cocaine. The unbelievably creative tagline “May the best hit man win” sums up the rest of the film. It’s Carnahan’s way of saying, “Hey, that’s basically it for the story. Now look at this chainsaw.” Tarantino would be ashamed (then again, he’d probably also be on his feet applauding Carnahan’s visceral action sequences).
If Carnahan is to retain his legacy gained from his breakout film “Narc” after releasing this barely decent hit man flick, it will only be because of the 50-caliber sniper rifle. Carnahan practically rocks the theater with each bullet that tears apart not only human bodies, but a good portion of a floor of a building. Just about everything else considered gruesome or brutally pleasing in “Smokin’ Aces” has either been done before or is as pointless as watching any of the film’s characters inevitably die.
I almost feel sympathetic to the established actors like Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman and Ray Liotta who were thrown in as useless characters, rendering them cameos at best. On top of that, Alicia Keys proved in her first motion picture debut that some musicians aren’t meant for the big screen. That leaves Piven and Ryan Reynolds, who plays an FBI agent trying to protect Piven from the party of killers, to hold the film together with their comical talent and the occasional dramatic self-reflection scenes. It’s too bad their characters are only slightly developed at best.
The core issue with “Smokin’ Aces” isn’t that it’s simply a bloodletting between the most one-dimensional characters you will ever see, but more so because there’s no reason to care. Carnahan never gives any indication that there’s anything below the surface of his visual madness, leaving you with only excessive blood, carcasses and even more prostitutes to take home in your head (although I understand if some of you enjoy that reward).
“Smokin’ Aces” is no doubt an entertaining series of stylishly directed action sequences, but unless sometime next week you are daydreaming about carving out someone’s heart, “Smokin’ Aces” will be as forgettable as “Underworld: Evolution” was this same time last year.
