Review of Smokin' Aces (2006) by Chriss M — 18 Feb 2010

Smokin' Aces is a bit of a mess. For every good bit, there's a few bad bits. With movies of this genre, it seems to me, that there are three important aspects: the characters, the set-up and the execution. Dialogue, cinematography, direction, soundtrack are all important as well, of course, but they take a back seat.

The characters should be colourful and over the top (with some great dialogue in a really stand out genre piece). In Smokin' Aces, I feel like it mostly fails here in both ways. Some characters are so bland they're instantly forgettable, while others are so over the top that they're basically just cartoons. There isn't enough style in any of the characters to really make them worth watching.

The set up, which in this movie is the premise that so many assassins are sent to kill this same guy, is excellent. You know, pretty exciting. It gives great foundations to build upon. Same with the action set pieces. They're all built up toward adequately. Like the beginning of the third act, with the elevator scenes.

And finally, there's the execution. The pay off to the build up. This is where the movie fails the worst, in my opinion. In the action pieces, there's some cool shots like the sniper fire, but mostly it's all very mediocre and nothing special. The same is to be said for the execution of the underlying plot twist you just know it's building up to.

A few miscellaneous notes- The soundtrack was mostly poor, the humour often fell flat on its face, the whole film reeks of Tarantino (which isn't good when he has no part of it), annoyed at the decision to make the lesbian have a feminist rant.

Up until the end, I'd say this was about a three star movie. But the unnecessary and silly twist at the end combined with the ultimately unlikely and dumb actions of Ryan Reynolds' character lowers it to an average rating. If you want a movie of this genre, only done better, check out Guy Ritchie's Rock N' Rolla.