Movie Review: Smokin Aces

Smokin' Aces is another Tarantinoesque endeavor. Not that Tarantino has copyrights to this genre of movie making, but he's been so good at it that it seems like everyone else is trying to copy him. Any who.....Smokin Aces is at best Tarantino Lite, its good in parts, but the overall product fails miserably.

If I compare it with those Tarantino movies that have made this genre so good then there are few things that stand out - once you get over the violence and all the style, you notice that the characters have a lot of depth and the lines(dialogues) they speak in these movies are priceless. However most of these directors that try to follow that path still fail in these two important aspects.

Joe Carnahan who made the awesome Narc, completely fails in Smokin Aces to create memorable moments. First error there are just too many characters who talk in a cryptic manner and whisper important lines. As an audience you feel you have to pay attention otherwise you'll miss out on the fun. So you work hard as the movie progresses and try to hold on to everything that is said, however you realize that none of these guys are saying anything least bit interesting. You still stay with the movie, hoping that this build up will lead to an awesome finale. But in the end, you are not rewarded for any of the hard work you put in as an audience, because the movie has a super mediocre ending and by the time the credits roll, you are like - what was all that fuss about?

The other mistake is most of these movies, even though have serious underlying plot, are almost like dark comedies (because of the style and one-liner element). Smokin' Aces starts off like that, however towards the end, it takes a very serious and emotional note which feels totally disconnected. You cannot have an emotional scene in a movie when the characters are so under developed. I mean how do you expect the audience to even give a shit about someone having a 10 min role in the movie?

Anyways enough of that, you know what I am trying to get at.

In terms of positives, I think Jeremy Piven plays his role effortlessly, the Kung Fu kid was the funniest character and his sequence drew most laughs followed by the redneck, neo-nazi killer. Ryan Reynolds actually delivers a very good performance as a Fed and has the most footage in the movie which he uses to show public his serious non-National Lampoon side. Everyone else, and there are lots of them, is wasted in the movie. There are sparks of good movie making here and there, for example there is fair measure of shock value in some of the scenes. The amount of time a character will stay on the screen is not dependent by who plays it, because as an audience we normally assume that if a big named star is playing a certain character they will stick around for long. This is a novel risk that Joe takes, but its novelty expires quickly after you've seen two of those.

The movie is about this Vegas magician, Buddy Aces Israel, who gets involved with the mob and is now FBI's chief witness and could help them wipe out the entire La Cosa Nostra. So what do you do if you are the mafia head, you order a hit on your enemy and that's exactly what happens. They bring in an expert to kill Buddy and bring back his heart for a Million dollars. However the word gets around and a number of crazy killers are after the prize now. Ultimately how all that goes down is what the movie is all about and even though it wasn't good, I would still not spoil it for you.

Few months back, I thought Lucky Number Slevin, which was another movie in the same genre, was a bad movie but Smokin Aces tops that. It's a waste because there was a very talented director at the helm working with an excellent premise. When I saw the trailer and heard what the movie was about, I thought this one would be real fun. But alas even after all those things going for the movie, Joe delivers a very mediocre product.