Smokin’ Aces—Should be re-titled “All Smoke and No Aces”
SMOKIN’ ACES |
|
| Genre: Drama | Year: 2007 |
| Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Peter Berg, Brian Bloom, Sharon Bruneau | Writer: Joe Carnahan |
| Rated: R— Violence, Language, Drugs and Nudity | Director: Joe Carnahan |
  |
|
| A classic mobster-hit man movie, Smokin’ Aces is about a mob boss who takes out a contract on a Vegas magician turned mobster, because the Vegas magician decided to testify against the mob. So, the FBI is trying to protect him and everyone else is trying to kill him. | |
 |
|
This movie is not as good as I wanted it to be. It has great violence, excellent twists in the plots, interesting hit-man (and hit-woman) characters…..but there is a certain lack of some integral part in this movie. First the good stuff. There is so much going on at once that you have to take a breath. The action moves fast enough to keep your attention, and is reminiscent of the old school John Woo movies (Paycheck, Once A Thief). Unfortunately the random violence, which I tend to adore in good gangster flicks, is just not enough to carry the movie. There is no human story. For example, Godfather, the best mob flick of all time, The Untouchables (2nd best) and Mobsters all had some special humanizing portion. These classic mobster-gangster movies made you either love or hate on some level. Smokin’ Aces does none of these. It is just a bunch of people shooting at each other to save or kill a relatively worthless rich mobster-snitch guy. Seriously. If I cared about at least one character in this movie it would have been much better. I do not care about any of them, which is good because mostly they all die anyways.
So I give Smokin’ Aces props for well directed violence, but I also give them a sad face for a succinct lack in characterization. Nobody in this film really cares about anything. They just shoot at things. Not what I look for in a movie.
The saddest thing about this movie is Ben Affleck. I don’t care what anyone says about Ben, he is by far one of the best actors in Hollywood today. He just keeps getting stuck in making crappy movies. BEN! Where is the characterization we loved in Boiler Room, Jersey Girl, and Good Will Hunting? Get back to the basics Ben, dude, you are rich enough now. Stop making crappy movies for cha-ching. Your fans are not impressed.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.