Buddy ‘Aces’ Israel is Vegas’ top showman, five times winner of the award in the neon lit city he is as much an entertainer as a magician, but he also has a darker side… he is in heavy with the mob, the mafia, the cosa nostra, whatever name you would like to call them by. At first he just sidled up to them and became friends with them, just for the prestige, for the image it propelled in his direction. Soon though the allure of criminal enterprises became too much for him and his involvement was more than just by association. He started to use the massive amounts of money he made to bankroll crime, building himself up to be a known ‘player’ in the game. Then it all went wrong!
Now he is under federal protection and is set to rat on the last remaining big moss boss. Unsurprisingly the said boss, one Primo Spazzera, doesn’t like this and puts a $1 million bounty on ‘Aces’ head, leading to all the major players in the hitman world heading towards Lake Tahoe where ‘Aces’ is supposedly hiding out.
Smokin’ Aces owes an awful lot to Pulp Fiction and Killing Zoe (both scripted, in part at least, by Roger Avery) and while it is a lot of fun it comes nowhere close to emulating the films is so obviously admires. That said could anything in this kind of genre really ever match Pulp Fiction? That said it is an enjoyable blast of a film, it moves at 150 miles per hour from start to finish and is chock full of famous faces. In fact most of the main cast will be recognised by viewers.
Let’s see we have Ben Affleck as a fast talking bail bonds man (probably his best role for ages), Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds as the two FBI agents who are trying to keep Buddy alive, Alicia Keys as a female hit woman, Andy Garcia, Jason Bateman and Jeremy Piven as the eponymous hero.
The whole cast is superb and Jeremy Piven, in what is I think his first really big role is fantastic as ‘Aces’. You see, and feel, where his life choices have taken him. Aces could have had the world in his hands as a magician but that just wasn’t exciting enough for him, the adrenaline of crime took him just too far and he crossed that invisible line that you can never come back from. The fact that you can surmise all this just from brief background and the way Piven plays him is a testament to the actor. You should really dislike this guy, he isn’t really a nice person, but you do kind of feel for him, as his world collapses around him.
Smokin’ Aces could have been a cracking little crime based action film but the brilliance of The Departed, released in cinemas around the same time, meant it had a lot to compete against. Maybe now on DVD it can come into its own and not have to be compared to its illustrious predecessor. Aces does smash its way into your chest, trying to rip your heart out with its fast talking hip characters, its quick snappy editing and its often quirky dialogue. It makes you admire it cheek and its brashness, pulling you into its story and holding your attention for quite a while. When it starts to pull all the diverging characters together into the main story, bringing the threads together it then starts to fall apart a bit. It also suffers from the great American failing, that of heavy handed hinting. It doesn’t like to surprise you too much so belabours certain points so that it can lay the seeds for future plot twists/surprises. I find it annoying when a writer feels the need to do that, just in case some people don’t follow what is going on.
So while ‘Smokin’ Aces’ doesn’t fulfil its brazen promises it does come out as a hugely enjoyable movie to watch. It sits on that fine line, balancing between OK and good. It is certainly worth seeing if you like Pulp Fiction, Miami Vice and those kind of films but not if you like to watch a bit of intelligence in your movie watching. For me it was something that was a lot of fun and I would probably watch again, although would never actually think about buying it to do so!
