SMOKIN' ACES

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Universal Pictures
Grade: D
Directed by: Joe Carnahan
Written By: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven,
Ryan Reynolds, Peter Berg, Martin Henderson, Taraji Henson,
Alicia Keys
Screened at: AMC 84th St, NYC, 1/23/07
Opens: January 26, 2007

It takes genius to write a script as convoluted as the one that
moves the machinery in Joe Carnahan's "Smokin' Aces."
Really, it does. Ask a freshman composition class at Harvard to
do it. Bet they can't. Heck, ask a senior screen-writing class at
NYU. They'll be baffled. After twenty minutes of this labyrinthine
mobster pic, I felt like taking in something nice and easy like
three hours of David Lynch's "Inland Empire" just for relaxation.
The best that can be said about the movie is that it's all style
and no substance, but let that not be confused in the slightest
with Martin Scorsese's "The Departed." No way, though
Carnahan may dearly wish the audience will talk about "Aces" in
the same breath. There are a few moments of striking visuals
along with Mauro Fiore's generic Vegas cinematography, but
nothing that can't be done about as well in a video game,
particularly a scene involving a babe with a gun the size of a
California Sequoia in a building across the street from a Vegas
hotel, which she uses to pick off half a dozen or more people as
though at random, just as junior would do before dinner in his
room with his Dell Dimension and joystick.

One of Carnahan's previous works, "Narc," which uses Ray
Liotta to better effect, was at least comprehensible, the tale of a
disgraced Detroit narcotics detective opting for redemption
when probing the murder of a cop with the man's former
partner–a violent maverick who knows more than he is telling.
The current movie, knocked out four years later, depicts the
FBI's move against the Mafia as the agency races to get to
Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven), a Las Vegas showman,
before the bad guys get to him first, that is, before they get
to smokin' "Aces."

The opening scene is the only contemplative one, bringing up
memories of Francis Ford Coppola's four-star "The
Conversation," but the pic goes far downhill from there after FBI
agents Carruthers (Ray Liotta) and Messner (Ryan Reynolds)
tune in on Mafia conversations about icing Buddy and (shades
of "Apocalypto") cutting out his heart. Enter a bevy of cool
dudes including hotshot FBI agent Stanley Locke (Andy Garcia),
and bail bondsman Jack Dupree (Ben Affleck–who is gone from
the scene pretty fast), and a pair of female contract killers,
Georgia Sykes (Alicia Keys) and her lover Loretta Wyman
(Davenia McFadden)–the last two racing to beat the men in the
game of smokin' Aces.

As though the lesbian lovers and the maverick agents and
killers are not off-the-wall enough, Carnahan brings in a troika of
neo-Nazis, the Tremors, one of whom guns down a fellow while
their 25-year-old car blasts retro music, then chats with the body
while manipulating the corpse's mouth as though the duo were
Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy.

The expected climactic shootouts blaze away, while a fast-
talking explanation by agent Stanley Locke involving a man who
has received more plastic surgeries than could are performed
by a team of specialists in one year on Rodeo Drive and a heart
transplant operation to boot make "Smokin' Aces" a bizarre
movie entry even for January.

Rated R. 109 minutes 2007 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online