“Smokin’ Aces”
Universal Pictures
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Starring Jeremy Piven, Alicia Keys, Ryan Reynolds, Ray Liotta, Ben Affleck, Taraji Henson, Chris Pine and Peter Berg
Rated R

1 ½ Stars

Director Joe Carnahan burst onto the Sundance scene four years ago with the edgy police-thriller, “Narc.” It’s been all downhill since then.
Carnahan’s latest blood-soaked action flick does little more than ape some vague Quentin Tarantino/Guy Ritchie cinematic style—the problem being that their approach hasn’t been the vanguard for several years now and Carnahan certainly doesn’t bring anything new to the table. “Smokin’ Aces” is bloody and quirky, but so what? This is a movie that uses a lot of shallow cinematics to gloss over an otherwise run-of-the-mill action flick.

Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven) plays a popular Las Vegas magician who has agreed to testify against his former Mafia associates. Naturally, the Mob puts a large bounty out on the turncoat, which draws every weirdo-assassin to Lake Tahoe where two unlucky cops do their best to defend the magician whose taken refuge in the penthouse with a roomful of hookers and drugs.

On its own, this isn’t necessarily a bad story premise, but “Smokin’ Aces” can’t seem to find any meat to flesh out the story bones. Instead, we get “quirky” assassins and a lot of ultra-violence designed to distract the audience from the fact that nothing is really happening in the film. Lesbian assassins buck up against a Neo-Nazi trio of killers, and while it makes it brings some interest to the scene, all of the bad guys are such buffoons that it’s hard to get involved in the story or the action.

It doesn’t help matters that Buddy is such a jerk that you wouldn’t mind taking him out yourself. Couple the unappealing characters with frenetic editing that makes it hard to tell what’s going on in the inevitable shoot outs and your left with a royal mess of a movie. I suppose that the all-star cast and the buckets of blood will entice young males to the theater, but I can’t help but think that everybody involved just phoned this one in.

Movie reviews by Sean, “The Movie Guy,” are published biweekly in “The Port Arthur News.” He can also be found on KAVU-TV, plus KVIC 95.1fm and KOLE Radio 1340am in Victoria and Beaumont, Texas. Additional reviews can be found at www.panews.com, www.myvictoriaonline.com/Entertainment or at www.rottentomatoes.com. Sean welcomes your comments via email at smcbride@kavutv.com.