03/07 - RAG Magazine

Smokin’ AcesCast: Ryan Reynolds, Ray Liotta, Alicia Keys,Director: Joe CarnahanThe eleven-year old boy inside of me, the one that glues glow-in-thedarkstars to his ceiling and watches Saturday morning cartoons,adores Joe Carnahan’s new picture Smokin’ Aces. It’s a directorialrelease; an indulgence of the gag reflex, satisfying all the itchingtwitches of any filmmaker working in the action genre. It’s riddled withcontrivance and clichés from other, better pictures, but Smokin’ Acesimitates with ingenuity and cunning. It’s strong and dark in its humor,even managing to rend some authentic tears from its players. Mr.Carnahan lashes out with this picture, bloodying his resume with awork of style and violence and the colorful upchuck of the iconichitman character through all its iterations.The film works a little like Snatch—or any of Guy Ritchie’s pictures forthat matter—but Snatch diagnosed with violent psychosis: about adozen contract killers, none of whom are colorless, are hired to killBuddy “Aces” Israel. The first to do so receives $1,000,000. Thespecifics of the deal are fuzzy, mumbled fast and spitfire like an episodeof “24” with the volume down, but the basics find Aces (Jeremy Piven)mixed up with the wrong mob boss and an upcoming testimony. Workingto protect Aces are Agent Carruthers and Agent Messner (Ray Liottaand Ryan Reynolds), woven into a red-tape FBI bureaucracy by StanleyLocke (Andy Garcia), their boss. Anyway, word about the hit goingdown on Buddy Aces Israel gets around quick and soon more flavorsof hitman than a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop are running around, alllooking to remove Israel’s heart (one of the conditions of the contract).And so the title is more clever and synoptic than we might’ve originallyrealized: the film really is just about smokin’ Aces.It’s too easy to rest on elitist laurels with a low-level January releaselike Smokin’ Aces and write it off as cheap imitation. Any goof can seehints of Tarantino and Rodriguez, a sprinkling of Natural Born Killers, adusting of The Usual Suspects, whispers of grindhouse projects fromthe seventies, and a fullhelping of Snatch. But howmany space crusades orotherworldly enrapturescan be deemed unique andbearing no resemblance toStar Wars and Lord of theRings? Filmmaking isimitation; be it an imitationof reality or of the unrealityof an action flick. Smokin’Aces is an imitation of thesnaps, bangs, and bulletwoundsof the actiongenre, sometimes evendoubling back on itself inrealization of its shamelessfuror. The fun lies in itspersistence. With all itscharacters and neat tricksfor piling up body bags, youcan’t help but imagine Mr.Carnahan running slackjawedthrough a toy store,plucking ideas and scenesfrom the shelves of earlierstorylines, glomming themtogether into this furiousamalgam.which is the big, mean ball-hog of the court. But as he proved withhis earlier film, Narc (a much quieter, reserved cop picture), Carnahanhas a thickened grasp of the medium. Without diving too deep intoshop-talk here, he doesn’t rely on the close-up or long-shot, doesn’tcolorize and over-saturate to annoyance, and essentially handleshis camera like a sensible, dynamic filmmaker. The film’s style isinstead a product of the characters, drawing Hitler mustaches ontotheir faces with Sharpies, blasting off .50 caliber bullets betweenresort hotels, and fending off kung-fu crazed, backwateradolescents (just…don’t ask). Problems arise when, in between allthe satisfying nonsense, Carnahan drops neatly wrapped packagesof storyline. Convoluted and unnecessarily complicated, the storyloops about near the end and almost loses us in the backlash.Even more unnerving, however, are the affectations the charactershave weaseled into us by the film’s end. More than a dozen charactersenter the resort Buddy Aces Israel is holed up in, but scant fewmanage to make it out. Their deaths are sometimes comical (onecharacter has trouble wielding his chainsaw and ends up using itas an impromptu chair, for instance), but other times their deathsare troubling. Carnahan’s script works best in its scenes of dialogue,which trickle almost to a halt as the bullets start flying through theextended climax; scenes with Jason Batemen as a self-deprecatinglawyer, Taraji Henson as the lesbian assassin swooning over AliciaKeys, Ben Affleck and his band of reluctant barfly cronies, andJeremy Piven spinning cards and pleading to his partner, Common.Smokin’ Aces works like magic—original, unique magic—when it’snot running guns blazing. And when the characters start dropping,and when Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds take spotlight, the toneturns from a blood-toothed grin to heavy-eyed sorrow. It’smelodrama, and it’s solemn enough to make some of the audiencelaugh in repulsion. But it’s an intelligent step away from theexploitation material (genuinely satisfying as it is) that the restof the film flings at us; and its end result is affecting and bizarrelyhuman. And to make any character from Smokin’ Aces seemhuman, if only for a scene or two, is something worth mentioningindeed. - Sam OsbornAnyway, the methodworks, if inconsistently. Asin Snatch, story playssecond fiddle to style,52| DEC RAG MAGAZINE