A Lowdown, Dirty, Cryin' Shame: Smokin' Aces

by Christian De Matteo

Wimpy

File this one under "Ugh."  Who ever thought I'd say that about an action movie containing a scene where some apes**t crazy motherf**ker falls down ass first on his own chainsaw in the middle of a shoot-out.  This, by itself, should qualify a movie as automatically awesome.  And therein lies the problem.  Writer/director Joe Carnahan seems to think this is all it takes too.

I've been dying to see this movie.  I am a plot freak generally, someone who needs a full, well-written story, beginning, middle and end (not necessarily in that order) with good characters I care about and intriguing or emotionally and intellectually challenging developments.  BUT... I also love to see s**t blow up.

And in that case, I'd prefer no plot at all.  (See Crank.)

Which is what I was hoping for here.  The plot description seemed appropriately slim in the previews:  A well-connected snitch is wanted dead by his old employer who puts out a million dollar hit on his head and everyone wants it first.  Murder, Mayhem and said promised "Buckets of Bullets" ensue.  But alas, Mr. Carnahan throws us a fast one and decides, with really no warning at all, to develop both more plot and character backgrounds in no particular order, sequence or logical rational for the majority of the film.  The result is a film with a few mislayed "cool lines", several very exciting and all too short action scenes and building and building and building and building and building and building of a story that instead of unveiling its final magnificence decides just to stop building and ends.  But not before throwing a plot twist at you that you couldn't possibly be less prepared for, and not in that good way your thinking.  I mean that you're so wrapped up in the incredible developing story that you have no intention of being anywhere near the end yet, because new things were just set-up five minutes ago, and your still waiting for waiting for the action to pop.  The movie is somehow a huge, never-ending beginning that forgets to middle and decides, perhaps out of sheer exhaustion from explanation, to end.

I struggled with my rating and, to quote my good friend Cedric, voted my conscience.  Smokin' Aces is not a bad movie, but it's also not a good movie.  It's really not a movie.  Not yet.  It's more of a rough draft barely removed from its brainstorm phase, a cool, exciting concept beginning to come to life, waiting to be molded and nurtured into full bloom.

But someone set it out on its own too soon.  Next thing you knew, it was hanging with the wrong crowd, getting into trouble here and there, experimenting with different substances, more and more of them illegal, until one day it showed up on the news having been shot down by police in the middle of knocking over a bodega.  It was never really bad, just misguided, and with a little more attention it could have gone in a very different direction.

Alas.