Smokin’ Aces Review

By Margaret Andrews

This movie is like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, only with more neo-Nazis and half the star power. A cast of crazy characters vie for the same destination in a race against time and each other, and for what? Money, of course.

Smokin’ Aces starts out smart enough, with the quick banter between two FBI agents (Ryan Reynolds as Agent Messner and Ray Liotta as Agent Caruthers) on a stakeout, listening in on an alleged mob hit discussion. Mafia boss Primo Sparazza wants the heart of Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven). The quick pace is fun and almost cerebral in its subtleness. Then Mr. Spell It Out For You (Mr. SPIOFY) rears his ugly head and swings the Obvious bat into the audience’s collective face. Mr. SPIOFY says, “We are done showing. We are now telling.”

This is the part where you have to pay attention because a lot of information whizzes by from different directions. Everybody seems to be after Buddy, a Las Vegas magician turned wannabe mafia boss. Stanley Locke (Andy Garcia) heads up the Feds who need Buddy for his mad stool pigeon skills. Jack Dupree (Ben Affleck) delivers a speech to his bounty hunter friends over a game of pool. In another scene we meet two street-smart women: Georgia Sykes (Alicia Keys), and her partner and possible lover (I only saw it going one way, so I’m not sure about that) Taraji Henson. These Quentin Tarantino-like characters (in other words, female, sexy, and empowered as hell), intend to use the femme fatale approach to meet their goal. Meanwhile, in this scene over here, we find the brothers Tremor. These leather-clad gothic monsters (including Kevin Durand, who you may recognize as the mutant freak boy from Wild Hogs) raise the bar for spastic murderous deviance.

Throw in a creative torturer and a guy called “The Swede” and you’ve got yourself an ambitious group all gunning for the same Lake Tahoe Penthouse where Buddy is currently hanging out. This series of fast-paced yakity-yak scenes are so jam-packed with backstory it feels like the movie is half over, but at this point you’re only 20 minutes into the film.

Jeremy Piven plays the self-indulgent, perpetually high, nostril-encrusted-with-white-powder Buddy Israel, who has run off to Lake Tahoe to piss and moan about the hotel rooms and how un-VIP-like they are, while the troops pack action and simultaneously descend on his ass.

Since the mice (that’s us) do play when the cats (that’s Mr. SPIOFY’s cohorts) are away, we jump back on the ride for some excitement replete with over-the-top violence including a mini Texas Chainsaw massacre scene. However, when Mr. SPIOFY returns and assumes you haven’t been paying attention to the story, or worse, doesn’t provide enough information to allow you to figure it out for yourself, then he feels justified having to come in and explain it all. The result is an unsatisfactory story because we aren’t allowed to participate in it. Apparently we were supposed to sit in the back seat, shut up, and be grateful for what they gave us. Well, I am grateful for at least two things in this movie: creative editing and at least two brilliant minutes of Jason Bateman.

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