2006 - SMOKIN' ACES, violent garbage pretending to be an action comedy

 Usually I enjoy writer/director Joe Carnahan's type of action/crime film.  He's basically Quentin Tarantino on speed lots of speed as it turns out.  He also likes lots of cool talk and everyone is constantly yapping away. However this mess of a film was not very good.  Basically the film is about an informant that the FBI and the mob want to get there hands on before he can testify in court about his relationship to a mob boss.  Smokin' Aces involves lots of hit men and law enforcement officers chasing after the informant either to kill him or keep him alive.

The movie has one of those everyone is in it casts.  The bigger named stars get killed off right away and by the end of the film the body count has significantly reduced the main actors.  Just to name a few, Ben Affleck, Ryan Reynolds, Alicia Keys, Chris Pine, Common and Andy Garcia are beaten, shot or stabbed.    This helps the viewer sort out who is doing what to whom as the various killings help shrink the number of actors one has to keep track of in this very convoluted plot.

 

Even for Joe Carnahan the plot is ludicrous with improbable situation after improbable situation piled on top of the viewer until it is all resolved by shooting every conceivable actor who has a credit in this film.  I suppose if you like lots of violent action you can enjoy this film.  But the action doesn't seem to have much context when it comes to moving the story along it's just there to titillate the action junkie 

 

The running time is 109 minutes.