Smokin' Aces Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)January 24th, 2007
SMOKIN' ACES
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2007 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
Overplotted and overscripted, this mess of a movie seems have hundreds of characters and thousands of dead bodies. SMOKIN' ACES is so confusing and convoluted that it has to talk fast for the first half hour just to set up the warring characters and their various, complex motivations. You'll be exhausted just trying to keep everything straight in this crime comedy without any actual laughs. The middle section doesn't get much better. But nothing is as downright awful as its ending gorefest, which has more blood and mayhem that any slasher flick with the possible exception of SAW 1 through 9 -- or whatever is the last number in that violent porn franchise.
Having both a January release date and the presence of Ben Affleck in the cast should be enough to raise the red flag for any potential viewer. But those who suspect that it might be a dog should consider that its writer and director Joe Carnahan gave us NARC, an excellent crime drama which was released several years ago during the normal dumping grounds of January. SMOKIN' ACES, however, should cement Joe Carnahan's reputation as a one-hit wonder.
Preposterous from start to finish, SMOKIN' ACES is so off the scale bad that the only question is whether it is so bad that it's good. Trust me. It isn't.
It is almost impossible to boil down this torturously complex story to a few sentences, but I'll give it a try. Buddy 'Aces' Israel (Jeremy Piven), a five-time winner of Las Vegas' Best Entertainer of the Year Award is in protective custody. The feds expect his testimony will completely destroy the Mafia in America, so Primo Sparazza (Joseph Ruskin), a dying mobster, puts out a million dollar contract on Buddy. Soon after that, every free-lance gunslinger on the planet starts heading to Buddy's hotel suite to mow him down. Along the way, they'll be slaughtering each other and any law enforcement officers who get in their way. This is just the surface level description of the happenings. It's much more complicated. The killers are all completely ridiculous with one group, for example, acting like lunatic wrestlers at the sideshow of a redneck circus.
As the bodies pile up and the blood fills up the halls, the bad guys refuse to stay dead. The movie seems like it will never die either, thus releasing its hostage audience to the fresh air of the real world.
SMOKIN' ACES runs 1:49. It is rated R for "strong bloody violence, pervasive language, some nudity and drug use" and would be acceptable for older teenagers. It is clearly an NC-17 film. The MPAA blew it again. But don't worry. No sex is shown -- just horrific mass murder.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, January 26, 2007. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
