by The Film Blogger

Created on: September 11, 2009

I must simply begin by stating that Smokin' Aces is an extremely flawed, mildly entertaining film rather than the exciting amalgamation of hilarity and carnage that myself, and I'm sure many others, were hoping for.

The basic premise involves a loser magician named Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven) turning informant against the Mob (who are impressively referred to as "La Cosa Nostra", their real name, a film rarity), and so the leader of the mob places a million dollar bounty on his head. Thus, we have a fleet of money-hungry assassins attempting to kill Israel and remove his heart, as the mob leader rather strangely requests (although it is important later).

The film begins with a wire-tap operation, with FBI agents Messner (Ryan Reynolds) and Carruthers (Ray Liotta) discovering the impending hit going down on Israel. Herein lies one of my main gripes with Smokin' Aces; the first half an hour is little else than build up. We find out what's going on and we meet the assassins, but at the end of the day, anyone of the mindset to see this film is going to be chomping at the bit to see as much mayhem on the screen as possible as soon as possible. If, as the trailer suggested, this film was going to be a mishmash collage of carnage, why not push the envelope all the way rather than half-assedly? This wasn't a film one expects to weave intricate plot threads or even develop characters at all, yet the film tries to (in vain), and it is simply too cumbersome for the the running time, especially when said bother steals so much of the screen time from the main attraction.

The assassins themselves are expectedly the treat of the film. We have The Tremor Brothers - three chainsaw-wielding, cheesit-eating insane Nazis, a sly master of disguise, two lesbian lovers (one of whom is played by Alicia Keys with surprising competence), and a man who wields a blade quite literally up his sleeve. There are also some other treats, such as Jason Bateman's annoyingly short cameo as someone who I can barely remember his purpose as I was laughing so hard. Needless to say, Bateman needed more screen-time as the herpes-infested, alcoholic loser that he was. Also, the biggest grin spread across my face when I realised that Aces' lawyer was played by Curtis Armstrong, who played Booger in Revenge of the Nerds; a cameo role that was again, far too short.

This introduction of the assassins makes it fairly clear that the script was a careless rush job. Garcia and Liotta have some decent one-liners

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