Smokin' Aces

Plot synopsis:
Las Vegas magician and wannabe gangster, Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven) is hiding out in a Lake Tahoe hotel penthouse with his entourage. His agent, Morris Mecklen (Curtis Armstrong), discusses a potential immunity deal with FBI Deputy Director Stanley Locke (Andy Garcia). Agents Richard Messner (Ryan Reynolds) and Donald Carruthers (Ray Liotta) learn that ailing Las Vegas mob boss Primo Sparazza (Joseph Ruskin) has issued a bounty on Israel worth one million dollars, and involving a mysterious assassin known only as The Swede, stipulating that he will bring Sparazza Israel's heart. A number of assassins also seek the reward, including Lazlo Soot (Tommy Flanagan), who specializes in disguises and impersonations; Sharice Watters (Taraji P. Henson) and Georgia Sykes (Alicia Keys), two hitwomen hired by Sparazza's underboss; Pasquale Acosta (Nestor Carbonell), a calm torture expert and mercenary; and the psychotic neo-Nazi Tremor brothers, Darwin (Chris Pine), Jeeves (Kevin Durand), and Lester (Maury Sterling).
Locke dispatches Messner and Carruthers to take Israel into custody when the deal is struck. Meanwhile, a team of bail bondsmen, Jack Dupree (Ben Affleck) and his partners, "Pistol" Pete Deeks (Peter Berg) and Hollis Elmore (Martin Henderson) have been hired by the firm that posted Israel's bail to bring him into custody. The bondsmen are attacked by the Tremors, and only Elmore escapes alive. Messner is dispatched to the murder scene while Carruthers proceeds to Israel. At the same time, each of the assassins gain access to the hotel in their own various ways.
Carruthers encounters Acosta, disguised as a security officer, in an elevator at the hotel. Carruthers senses something is wrong and both are mortally wounded in a gunfight. Meanwhile, Soot gains access to the penthouse by posing as one of Israel's henchmen. Israel's second-in-command, Sir Ivy (Common), learns that Israel agreed to inform upon Ivy as part of the plea deal and attempts to kill him, but Israel injures Ivy long enough for the hotel security team to restrain Ivy. Georgia finds Carruthers and Acosta in the elevator, but assumes Acosta is Soot. In Los Angeles, Locke abruptly withdraws from the deal with Israel and orders that Messner and Carruthers are not told. The Tremor brothers reach the penthouse floor, where they engage in a shootout with the security team and Ivy, who manages to kill Jeeves and Lester. Israel, learning of the FBI's new position, attempts suicide.
Messner arrives at the hotel and sets up a position around Georgia's elevator. Sharice provides cover from another hotel with a .50-caliber, M82 sniper rifle, outgunning the FBI agents. Acosta, still alive, shoots Georgia, but is shot by Carruthers. Sharice, thinking Georgia is dead, refuses to escape and keeps shooting at the FBI team. Georgia escapes to the penthouse, where she stops Darwin Tremor before he can kill Ivy. Tremor escapes, and Messner, distraught over the death of Carruthers, stops Ivy and Georgia on the stairwell, but lets them escape. Sharice, after seeing the pair alive and free through her rifle scope, is gunned down by the FBI.
Locke and a team of FBI agents descend on the penthouse and take Israel to the hospital, while Soot escapes by tearing off his disguise & dressing as a member of hotel security. Acosta, carted away on a gurney, is also shown to be alive. Darwin Tremor tries to escape, but is gunned down by Hollis Elmore.
Messner arrives at the hospital and learns the truth about the day's events from Locke. It transpires that the mysterious Swede is a prominent heart surgeon and that Soot was hired by Sparazza to get Israel's heart so it could be transplanted into the body of Sparazza. Sparazza is further revealed to be Freeman Heller (Mike Falkow), an FBI agent who went undercover and was thought to have been killed by the mob. The FBI had attempted to kill Heller, after they thought his assignment had blurred the lines between being a mobster or an FBI agent. But Heller survived and ended up taking on the role as Sparazza full time. The mobster has agreed to expose the mob's operations in exchange for Israel's heart as he is Sparazza's love child and, thus, the most compatible donor.
Messner, furious over the unnecessary deaths, especially Carruthers', protests and is ordered by Locke to leave the hospital and go home to Washington, D.C, as he is no longer on the case. Realizing that the FBI will never admit what they did, he walks into the emergency room, locks the door and pulls the plug on both men. He then lays his gun and badge on the floor while Locke and his men desperately try to break in, apparently resigning as an FBI agent.

Tags: comedy, murder, violence, cult, suicidal, horror, flashback, humor, suspenseful

Review:
Rather it is good, competent, workmanlike example of its genre, which is bad news for a movie that wants to be hip and edgy.Smokin' Aces has the requisite twisty plot.
It takes a strange sort of movie for a review to criticize the one genuinely good performance in it but Liotta just doesn't fit.Smokin' Aces manages to hold its whirly gig self together for the most part.
When the Mafiosi put a $1M price-tag on his head, hordes of hit persons (solos and teams, male and female, foreign and domestic; the EEOC would be more than satisfied with this field's diversity), some hired, others freelance, converge on the casino penthouse in Lake Tahoe where their quarry is "hiding", while his agent (gifted, yet underemployed, Curtis Armstrong) negotiates terms with the Feds.The deep cast includes Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, Jason Bateman, Alicia Keys, and plenty of other familiar faces.
Acting is great by the general assemble which includes fine performances by Andy Garcia and Ray Liotta.Problematically, the film tries to be too cool at the start, and reminds me too much of "Things to do in Denver...." and so on.
If you haven't seen this film id better point out (which many people have missed in their reviews or ignored) is that this film is a comedy, it is not in any way meant to be taken seriously.With that in mind it is a thoroughly entertaining movie.
There is a deeper plot than that but i wont go into detail as it will spoil the overall plot as there is a very major twist.There are a number of big names in this film so the acting is superb and there are many scenes which left me both laughing and intrigued.Again i must stress that if you go into this film expecting anything other than a fun, exhilarating action movie not to be taken seriously then you will miss the whole point as many other reviewers have, this is definitely a comedy.
I was, as my summary tagline thing states, "Thoroughly impressed".I know I gave it a 7 but I honestly cannot think of any gripes, and the ones I do are way too minor and end up having a balancing factor.For example, the movie doesn't seem to want us to be sympathetic with "Aces".
I assumed that Smokin' Aces would do the same as the trailer made it look like a comic hit-man film  with hyper filming, lots of stars and lots of action.Now, if you're thinking that I shouldn't assume then you're right, but this is how the film starts and it is how it is at various stages across the film.
The suddenly in the final third it decides that it not going to be superficially comic or superficially action-packed and suddenly seemed to have an emotional side and expected me to care about the characters and their plights  like it had been a serious drama all along (although I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take the ADD kid with the erection in that context).In doing this it does still do just about enough to keep a story going but to be honest I started to get bored as it changed tone based on whatever it want to do.
Time will tell if he can move away form just being a good looking guy with a deep voice, but he did seem in touch with his character here.Overall though, the film is nothing to write home about.
It's said that if you want to make a great film then keep the premise simple and SMOKIN' ACES has a relatively simple premise of the mob putting a million dollar contract on potential star witness Buddy " Aces " Israel and rival gangs of hit men trying to eliminate both Aces and each other to get their hands on the money .
THE DEPARTED has perhaps too many characters but at no point do we see captions saying " Mob rat " or " FBI informer or " Undercover cop " letting the audience know who these characters are , probably because it's revealed in the narrative what their function is , as SMOKIN' ACES continues you start to realise that there's no cohesive story save for the central premise .
If you catch this flick on cable, it might be worth watching, but don't waste any money on it.If your a film buff, you may also want to see it because it is referential to films like "The Conversation."The actors do one heck of a job and the individual characters are well fleshed out and interesting.
By the end of the movie the body count is very high, but it feels like watching someone else play a violent, stupid video game -- you're detached, and don't react on a gut level.All in all, this genre has already been better covered several times by others.
As for the other crazy characters, we have Jason Bateman so far from his "Arrested Development" role that it is hilarious to just look at him, not to mention the words that spew from his mouthpriceless; Ben Affleck and Peter Berg acting cool and collected while dragging their partner Martin Henderson along with them, the rapport between the three is nice; Taraji Henson and Alicia Keys (yes the singer) are brilliant as hitwomen on the case, talking racial politics and ripping on each other while being just plain badass; and the awesome Zach Cumer as a Ritalin- addled karate kid, so hyper and little that the dialogue and action he gives is some of the best comedy I've seen in awhile.
Good thing is there are loads of star to look at and they do give out a pretty decent performance.Synopsis: Buddy Israel is a wanted man, from the authority, and from every hit man as his price has gone up to 1 millions as the mob learns that he is turning against them to the FBI.At first I decide to ignore the negative review and decide to go straight to DVD.
Jeremy Piven gave is good bring out the best of Ace. Ryan Reynolds was also good.Like most of this type of movie there are some part that is humorous, unfortunately this movie seem a little force.
But only two detectives are protecting him and they are definitely going to have to be on their best alert for this guy since there is a bunch of bounty hunters also trying to get him.Smokin' Aces tries to be a hip new mafia movie that just very much misses instead of making it into a hit.
The acting wasn't really good, the camera work must have been done by a guy who plays too many video games, and the story was just confusing, it was too distracting since the movie was just so loud and stupid, it gave me such a headache.
While there are guns, explosions, jokes, and women, things aren't quite what they seem as it also comes with a misguided attempt to turn itself into an intelligent drama which unfortunately fails spectacularly at the film's close.That said, for 90 well-paced, stylish minutes, people make jokes and die in exciting ways, so you can sit back, switch off, and enjoy it.
I didn't want to get my hopes up too high for this one since most films released nowadays tend to disappoint, and it's a good job I didn't as Smokin' Aces is a huge mess of a film and nothing like the entertaining thriller it's trailers lead you to believe it is.
Smokin' Aces is, unfortunately, just another one of those 'cool' thrillers along the same lines as Lucky Number Slevin and Kill Bill which features a load of offbeat characters and a no good story that basically just throws them all in a melting pot together.
What a shame about the execution.This is supposed to be one of those 'interlocking stories' kind of films, but not only are the stories not very interesting; they don't go together very well either, which just makes Smokin' Aces feel like a big mess.
Smokin' Aces makes for great trailers and cool sound bites; but overacting, poor dialogue and overcrowded action scenes leaves it wanting.Certainly you might argue that there can never be too many brow-furrowed, tight-jawed, trigger-happy bad asses in one scene - and Reservoir Dogs will back the argument - but Smokin' Aces seems to forget there still needs to be direction and acting to actually make them cool.It seems the only instruction the actors received pre-shoot is "look hard" and "act very angry", and most manage to botch it.Smokin' Aces is however laced with tasty ingredients.
Since this has to be 10 lines I'd also like to warn people that it is a very confusing plot to follow in the beginning because the viewer is introduced to a lot of characters but as the movie goes on you catch on to their names and the roles they play.
And to make it even more offense, after all the fake hip Tarantino wannabe posturing (and don't get me wrong, I love KILL, BILL I even loved Neveldine and Taylor's CRANK) it actually expects us to take the characters seriously at the end and get all misty eyes about the fate of Alica Keys and about Ryan Reynolds' moral choices and getting misty eyed about anything to do with Ryan Reynolds may be asking too much for any audience.My favorite review of this one came from the Philadelphia Weekly; SMOKIN' ACES is "the worst film of 1998.".
I'll try to put it a little more succinctly; good actors like Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, and Andy Garcia had no hope of rescuing this film.
The cops in the film (played by Ray Liotta and Jason Patric) were complex and flawed, and even though they were like characters we've seen in movies before, they exceeded their stereotypes and were fully realized, human characters.
In Carnahan's new film, Smokin' Aces, cops play an important part in the story as well, but unfortunately they have about as much depth as extras lifted from a TV crime drama.This is a kind of movie I just hate: the kind where characters just drone on and explain and explain and explain.
It stole random hit men characters from all the great movies and watching it gave me strange flashbacks to good movies like SLC Punk, Snatch, and Sin City.
Starz's The Hollywood Reporter showed a small interview with Ryan Reynold's, and he said he's always done comedy movies and not serious emotional type ones, cause it's hard for him to let out his feelings, but for a first time serious acting movie, he did a dang good job.
Leave it alone.As far as the movie itself goes, Smokin' Aces does a terrific job of keeping the viewer entertained by using a simple, yet brilliant plot scheme; introduce several different factions full of wild, exaggerated characters, pack them all into the same building with the same objective, and watch as a series of mismatched encounters ultimately leads up to an explosive finale.
I don't think he was trying to blow our minds with some Fight Club-esque turn of events, he just wanted some mildly thought-provoking punctuation to end his thrill ride of a sentence.What I truly loved about this movie was the fact that it almost forces you to pick favorites; it shoves the diverse cast of competing gunslingers in your face, flaunts their dysfunctional personalities and cutthroat techniques, then hurls them at each other so violently that it's a wonder anyone survives.
Ray Liotta stars as perhaps the most un-convincing Federal Agent in the history of film, Ryan Reynolds looks confused the entire time, and Jeremy Piven's character is poo.
-- they filled all the space that could have contained things like action or drama or characters with *people explaining the plot*.I want my money back..
Consider a 15 year old teenage boy that has spent all his life in an isolated air bubble being introduced to Tarantino and Guy Richie movies, hip hop videos and a little bit of Goodfellas in the space of a weekend, then giving him a fairly large budget and free reign on making a film.The result would not be far off from Smoking Aces..
If you want to see a good movie with this premise, check out the 1945 Danny Kaye vehicle "Wonder Man," also about an entertainer targeted by gangsters but made with qualities like wit, compassion, creativity and humor that totally eluded the makers of "Smokin' Aces.".
I saw Smokin aces and I must say it is one of the best action and crime movies in a last couple of years.The plot is very original and fresh and performances are fantastic.
It especially seemed like Carnahan must have watched Usual Suspects one too many times and I saw several things he stole directly from other movies such as Mission Impossible III.As far as the characters go none of them were interesting.
A decent story and build up with good moments peppered here and there unhinged by jarring changes in tone that doesn't simply stop the film in it's tracks, but steers it into a train wreck.A Jekyll and Hyde that has no idea what it wants to be, goes from ludicrous comedic attempts that don't work into trying to weave in subtle dramatic moments.It seems Reynolds and Liotta have been kidnapped from a different more serious movie altogether, Niven has some good dramatic moments, the scene with David Holley a standout, but again isn't served by the choppy tone.The appalling trio of red neck hit men the biggest mistake in this movie bar none.Massive disappointment..
we laughed over beers afterwards posing what was worse- A) the movie without one realistic character or plot device or B) self serving carnahan talking about his film and gushing over the"actors".
Lots of big guns, tattoos, black bitches and firefights.I was expecting an action comedy and came across with a totally different thing.The movie isn't bad, acting es decent.
There were some very interesting roles, not to mention strong performances by most of the cast, but in the end it was as if the director let everyone determine how they wanted their character to exit the film.If you are looking for a good action flick then pick something else.
Liotta was consistent, as was Garcia as always.Granted there are a few plot holes in the story, without giving any spoilers away, but if you can overlook these then I think you'll find the film worth watching.Me and my friends think the writers may have got a little caught up with the complexity of the script which kind of made it little less entertaining, it wasn't direct enough for me, the Departed (sorry to compare all the time) was direct, simple and intense, this had some intensity, but seemed to get a little lost at times.If you love gun fights and brutal action then the shooting scenes will astound you!
Smokin' Aces is one of the worst movies I've seen in a while, and I just got done watching Sandler's Zohan film.
The story line was weak, the characters and their actions/decisions were COMPLETELY unrealistic and the climax/payoff at the end of the movie was like getting excited for a blind date and then getting introduced to Rosie O'Donnel.
Narc,Joe Carnahan's second movie,is a spectacular film.On that great film,Carnahan took the clichés and he gave them new life with intelligent human drama and with a frenetic style.Smokin' aces,Carnahan's new film,is a step behind Narc.Smokin' aces follows the example of recent action films without dramatic excess(like Crank or the series of The transporter)and with a frenetic style with a lot of eccentric characters destined to crush because of the script.The result is very fun and with a lot of energy but the film is not too satisfactory.The movie's first hour shows us the shallow characters but the movie affirms that nobody has the secure life...anything can happen.The second hour shows us violent scenes with a very irregular style:some of them are serious and some of them are so ridiculous that make laugh.There are some forced elements but I have to admit that Carnahan made a great work as a director in this movie which is always near to loose the control.The action scenes have a lot of impact.This film has so many characters that a lot of them are very shallow.Jeremy Piven is great on his role.Ryan Reynolds has also a good performance as Agent Richard Messner.The singer Alicia Keys really surprised me with her performance as a killer.The interaction her character has with her ''partner'' Sharice(Taraji P.Henson)is real,honest and credible.If this film would have the same impact Narc had,it would have been a masterpiece.But I have to say Smokin' aces kept me very interested and fun and I was never bored with it..
(this comment may contain possible minor spoilers).i rather enjoyed this crime drama/action flick.and by action,i mean balls out action.this thing is ultra violent with bodies flying everywhere.though there is a semblance of story,not much time is spent on that aspect.without giving too much away,there is a federal witness that the F.B.I want to roll over on his mob buddies.of course,this eventually gets to the right people who want him taken out before that can happen.every contract assassin and their dog wants to fulfill the contract.there are some memorable quirky characters here,and some fine acting.Chris Pine is brilliant here,virtually unrecognizable.the best of the bunch though is Jeremy Piven,who puts in a stellar performance.for sheer action and excitement,this one very satisfying thrill ride.for me,Smokin' Aces is an 8/10.
Watching Smokin' Aces is like watching a film you loved from your childhood many years later  it's entertaining enough but it's just not as good as you remember.
there were long parts of the movie where nothing was really going on.I thought the lawyer was a little off but it was still comedy.Ben was OK.Ryan was good.The ending...
Nevertheless, if you expect a decent plot that delivers solid action and developed characters, then you're likely to be let down by this film..