Smokin' Aces

Action, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Ryan Reynolds	Richard Messner
Ray Liotta	Donald Carruthers
Joseph Ruskin	Primo Sparazza
Alex Rocco	Serna
Jeremy Piven	Buddy Israel
Ben Affleck	Jack Dupree
Peter Berg	Pete Deeks
Martin Henderson	Hollis Elmore
Zach Cumer	Warren
Jason Bateman	Rip Reed
Common	Sir Ivy
Andy Garcia	Stanley Locke
Alicia Keys	Georgia Sykes
Wayne Newton	Himself

Director	Joe Carnahan
Producer	Tim Bevan; Joe Carnahan; Liza Chasin; Jeff Abberley
Writer	Joe Carnahan
Cinematography	Mauro Fiore
Musician	Clint Mansell
User Credit 1	Robert Frazen
User Credit 2	Mary Zophres

A Las Vegas performer who made it big as a magician and became very friendly with the mob decides to turn states evidence. Buddy Israel (Jeremy Piven) decides to testify against the mob and everyone that ever had dealings with him seem to have ordered a hit on him. The million dollar hit is overheard by FBI investigators at a mob home and the FBI desperately tries to get to him first. Buddy is hidden in a hotels luxury suite where the FBI think that is the last place that would be assassins will look for him. Assassins of every description are after him to get the money. A dark hidden secret comes to light at the end.

Smokin' Aces is Tarantino lite - a vague and unsuccessful attempt to bring together a bunch of offbeat, unrelated characters in a situation where a bloody resolution is inescapable. Like an absentminded chef, however, writer/director Joe Carnahan has gone into this endeavor without the full complement of ingredients, and the missing ones are crucial to the final product's consistency. The characters are uniformly uninteresting - a bunch of ill-defined caricatures who never attain even a semblance of identity. The undercurrent of dark humor is rarely amusing and the screenplay's supposed cleverness is rarely ingenious. The setup takes too long and the resolution is a letdown. The movie demands an attentive audience to follow the diverse characters and plot threads but, in the end, it fails to reward that attention.
by James Berardinelli