Smokin'
Aces starts off with FBI agents Messner (Reynolds,
Just Friends) and Carruthers (Liotta,
The Last Shot) surveilling the home of a
notorious mob boss named Primo Sparazza (Riskin, Robin and the 7 Hoods),
whereupon they overhear a plot to assassinate a Las Vegas entertainer named
Buddy 'Aces' Israel (Piven, Two for the Money),
who has become one of the biggest FBI informants in years, The contract pays
$1 million to whoever kills Israel and takes out his heart, so naturally, the
leading hit men from around the world come out of the woodworks for this
top-dollar prize. Israel is offered refuge in the luxury suite of a Tahoe
hotel, but word of his whereabouts catches on fast, leaving the FBI with their
hands full in trying to protect their key informant from getting put on ice by
some of the cleverest, most ruthless professionals in the assassination
business.
Writer-director Joe Carnahan (Blood, Guts, Bullets
and Octane), who showed such promise in the gritty, violent
crime drama Narc, takes a step back in this overcooked action-thriller which
borrows more than a page from the style of other recent thrillers, such as
True Romance, The Way of the Gun,
Revolver, Lucky Number Slevin, and a myriad
others in the post-Pulp Fiction era of colorful villains, snarky banter,
offbeat humor, and ultra-violence galore. Carnahan clearly shows that he can
copy from the best of them, but as of yet, hasn't quite been able to come up
with a distinct style of his own. As a result, his films are mostly
targeted to genre die-hards who aren't expecting anything else but
slickly-directed regurgitations of the
same thing that they got years ago, back when most of the things featured in
these films were fresh.
Carnahan certainly possesses the tools for making a kooky character-driven,
high-octane action film, but suffers here by trying to be more clever than is
necessary to deliver the entertainment goods. First, there are far too many
characters, each playing up his or her own one-note stereotype as a crutch to keep
them easy to identify without having to employ a certain thing called
character development into the mix. Piven is nervously funny, Liotta smolders,
Reynolds is facetious, etc. Each actor is cast according to type for easy reads,
with some of the less well-known supporting players cast because they fit a
certain physical mold or exhibit eccentric personality ticks. This wouldn't be
detrimental if any one character had even a third of the total screen time,
but each is given his or her 15 minutes to shine, regardless of their utility to
the plot.
Smokin' Aces plays out more like a series of scenes that pay off with
action or laughs around a central theme, but with the exception of the first
scene and final revelation, it's driven solely by energy and gusto instead of
by its story. The direction is filled with the requisite eye candy; the cast
is colorful, and there's quite a bit of explosive gunfire and bloodshed
unleashed at regular intervals. However, without a rooting interest in the success
or failure of any of the characters or their missions, all that is left for us to admire is the
packaging and visceral nature of Carnahan's delivery.
By the time the film hits its climax, what meager build-up it has dissolves
into little more than a noisy, grisly free-for-all, with Carnahan tossing in a
kitchen sink approach that smells more like desperation than someone in
complete command of his characters. Even a late-minute romance is trotted out, as if
someone needed an emotional element to cling to to make it feel complete.
It's too little too late; the
characters are so cardboard, any further exploration is a waste
of time anyway. Carnahan has more fun in creating each goofy character and
having them interact, then kills them off after they've served their comedic
or dramatic usefulness,
As long as you enjoy this sort of short-attention
span style of filmmaking, perhaps you will come away feeling like you got your
fill of darkly comic mayhem to justify the time and money spent.
Unfortunately, for those looking for something more for their bucks than
sensory titillation, Smokin' Aces provides enough distractions to keep you
from turning away from the screen, but it never keeps you reeled in sufficiently
to get truly excited when mortal peril erupts for any of the characters. For
his next film, hopefully Carnahan goes back to the restraint that he showed in
Narc by giving us a story to go along with his characters, and having us give
a damn what happens to them before they are permanently dispatched.
