Two FBI agents, one (Ryan Reynolds) a straight-shooting newbie and the other (Ray Liotta) a paunchy vet, are staking out ailing mob boss Primo Sparazza’s Nevada mansion when they overhear plans for a hit against “cardsharp, illusionist, douchebag, five-time Vegas showman of the year” Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven).Buddy, a showroom magician, insinuated himself into the gangster lifestyle “doing the Sinatra thing,” becoming a mascot of sorts and sucking up to those with the deepest pockets and hottest trigger fingers. But he got too entrenched in the lifestyle for his own good, started hatching his own criminal enterprises and ended up splitting Sparazza’s family into two rival factions.
Adding insult to injury, the word gets out that Buddy is about to turn state’s witness in a play for immunity from prosecution. Knowing that his number is up, he lounges around the top-floor high-roller suite of a Lake Tahoe hotel/casino in a natty bathrobe, drowning himself in hookers, coke and remorse.
Sparazza doesn’t just want Buddy dead; the old-school Sicilian wants, literally, Israel’s heart on a plate. A million-dollar bounty attracts a slew of would-be assassins, from a Swedish torture specialist to a gang of speed-freak neo-Nazi brothers to a pair of lesbian hit-women (Alicia Keys and Taraji P. Henson), “two of the hottest, heaviest b—–s alive.” It’s a race to see who can clip the scumbag first, or whether a moonlighting bondsman (Ben Affleck, enjoyably deadpan) and his cronies can get snitch Buddy safely into government custody before the shooting starts.
What follows is a lot of dirty, mean, hyperactive fun. Writer-director Joe Carnahan’s “Smokin’ Aces” is a darkly comic actioner that borrows from the stylistic playbooks of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie without feeling like a cheap knockoff.
Carnahan’s gritty, kinetic touch keeps things barreling ahead almost too quickly for its own good, but with enough effortless heft and peeks of drain-circling morality to keep it from feeling like a mere video game shoot-em-up.
The script is quietly inventive in the way it keeps so many characters in play and keeps them intriguing, even if one less assassin might not have been a bad way to tighten the focus even further.
As far as labyrinthine crime plots go, though, this one ends neater and simpler than most.
It’s a tribute to Carnahan and his cast that almost none of his broad-strokes characters feel like simple cartoons or like catchphrase-spouting placeholders to up the film’s coolness quotient. And there is room here for such a wide range of strong performances, from Liotta’s needed wisdom and world-weariness to Keys’ underplayed sexuality to Henson’s raging emotion to rapper Common’s slowly mounting fury as the chief of Buddy’s betrayed entourage.
At the eye of the storm is an electric Jeremy Piven, dead-eyed and increasingly hopeless as a bad guy hitting bottom. What makes his Buddy so interesting, and oddly endearing, is the way his cockiness still flares up in the face of his own annihilation. He’s a con man desperate enough to start believing his own bull. “I can shift it,” he pleads. “I can make it as real as this room.”
“Aces” has a persuasive sense of style, but sometimes its preciousness can be tiresome.
Carnahan’s choices may be left field, but they’re rarely needless and never out of control. His “Smokin’ Aces” is a sinew-splattered pulp rollercoaster ride off its own Ritalin, and far more enjoyable because of it.
SMOKIN’ ACES
Universal Pictures
Rated R
STARRING:
Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Common, Andy Garcia, Alicia Keys, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven and Ryan Reynolds
THE VERDICT:
Action and bloody violence abound in “Smokin’ Aces,” an intense action flick that manages to maintain decent characters.
3/4 stars