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.

2010 - THE A TEAM, remake of the TV show

 I guess The A Team isn't really that good of a film, but it is an entertaining one.  The film has a fun cast with Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley and some bruiser called Quintin "Rampage" Jackson recreating the roles from the television series.  Jessica Biel is the Intelligence Officer assigned to catch this rogue team of Army soldiers and Jon Hamm shows up in a rather stupid cameo.

 The plot starts out fairly decent but descends into pointless confusion by the middle of the film.  It's hard to understand how it's going to resolve itself but you can be sure it will be in a big action climax like so many of these types of big screen action films usually did.

 

So what is there to recommend about this film?  Well the general light tone of the film with it's emphasis on comedy and character interaction.  The over the top action scenes and the silliness of the whole thing make this an acceptable no brainier entertainment. Some of the dialog is pretty funny.

 

The director Joe Carnahan wrote the screenplay along with Brian Bloom and Skip Woods.  These three guys have worked in the action genre where men are men and get to blow things up.

The running time is 119 minutes.

2001, 2002 - THE HIRE, glorified, car commercials.

The marketing department at BMW got the brilliant idea to hire 8 top directors and have them shoot short films with the actor Clive Owen racing around in different model BMWs.

AMBUSH, by John Frankenheimer, a good car chase film.  Frankenheimer had directed Grand Prix and Ronin so he knew how to film exciting chases.

CHOSEN, by Ang Lee.  Also a fairly decent car chase film.  Probably the only interesting thing in it, Lee's little inside joke about The Hulk his big budget flop was the next film he directed.

THE FOLLOW, directed by the artsy fartsy Wong Kar-Wai, aims to be a mood piece but is just boring.

STAR, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring his then wife Madonna.  Madonna looks pretty bad and the film is about the driver embarrassing and humiliating her.  Almost prescient considering how Madonna and Ritchie's marriage ended.

POWDER KEG, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu wallows in it's stylization and pretentiousness, no fun.

HOSTAGE, directed by John Woo, only goes to prove that Woo should stick to filming scenes with Chow Yun-fat shooting thousands of bullets into guys instead of staging car chases.

TICKER, directed by Joe Carnahan, probably the best short film of the 2nd season, to bad Carnahan couldn't have brought this kind of interest to The A Team.

BEAT THE DEVIL, directed by Tony Scott.  The most annoying of all these short films, an attempt at a supernatural/ comedy/ action short film.  Filmed as usual by Scott like he had irritable bowel syndrome.

 Ambush and Ticker are probably the only two worth checking out.  This series is kicking around on YouTube.

F98D6848-52B3-E752-8422-01C6E662EE81

1.03.01