Smokin' Aces

Every year 2 or 3 movies get released that owe their existence in some way to Quentin Tarentino and in 2007, this is the first of that batch of movies. However, it seems to borrow more from the Kill Bill volumes than the usual Pulp Fiction jacking and for the most part it seems to work. I am not going to lie, the movie makes absolutely no sense and every single character is essentially a cut out caricature, but it is so much fun to watch the mess unfold on the screen that you are really able to check your brain at the door.


A wasted Ray Liotta and a fantastic Ryan Reynolds are FBI agents sent to pick up a mob informant. The mob informant is about to give the FBI the biggest name in organized crime and because of that, there are 3 contracts out on his head. The bulk of the movie takes place inside a Lake Tahoe hotel and once you get passed the 45 minutes of exposition, you are in for a wild ride. See, that is the biggest problem with the movie. It feels that we need 45 minutes worth of back story before it can jump into the chainsaw wielding, gun blasting, and blood flying action. So what we get is a few monologues by different characters, all roughly hitting us over the head with useless information. Anyone coming to this movie for character development or plot points has obviously come into the wrong movie. People come into this movie because the trailer promises crazy over the top action with crazy over the top characters. Included in this orgy of actors is- Matthew Fox, Jason Bateman, Peter Berg, Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia and musicians Alicia Keys and Common. Alicia and Common both hold their own in their film debuts and I hope to see more of them in the future, especially if Alicia Keys is going to keep dressing like a hooker.


Luckily, after those first 45 minutes we get all the crazy over the top action we can handle. A guy gets lit on fire, more than a few people are brutally shot to death, another few are chopped up by a chainsaw and as soon as it starts all of my hopes and dreams for this movie were realized. We even get a pointless twist at the end, just for the hell of it. Ryan Reynolds, the main protagonist of the film is probably going to eventually break out as a big star, and he shows here that he deserves it. In a movie full of contrived over the top characters, he holds his own as the conflicted straight man and in the climax he really takes this movie beyond b-movie fare. On a final note, if you see this movie try and ignore the bad jersey accent by Ben Affleck and attempt to figure out where Andy Garcia’s character is from because his accent sounds like nothing I have ever heard and it is beyond obnoxious!