SMOKIN' ACES (2007) - ***1/2 There is a scene where the Tremors (triplet homicidal, hard-rockin Neo-Nazi assassins) assassinate one of the billed actor-characters. The mouth (and apparent brains) of the trio looks down at the corpse, uses his fingers to move the corpse's mouth to re-enate one of those melodramatic deaths of old westerns.
The thoughts that came to my mind were:
(1) You don't see this sort of thing in every crime movie.
(2) Used to hate the actor in question, but he's earned my respect.
(3) This is my sort of movie.
I mean, SMOKIN' ACES is....no, Odd isn't the right word. David Lynch having singing & dancing aborted Elephant fetuses and making us guess the meaning of it all, that is Odd.
On one hand, its very serious with itself with the junk crime tale with a cokehead Las Vegas entertainer-turned-witness Jeremy Piven being the center of a $1 million contract-kill, and every hitman and hitwomen want to cash it in. Really effective in how damn pathetic Piven gets (and I give him credit, because its the best portrayal of a snorter I've seen in some years. We get eyes as red as the Red Sea, we get the white-filled nostril, and we get a guy so wasted, he can't even kill himself right).
I guess Arie Gold went to hell after losing Vincent Chase as his client.
But yet the movie has these whacky as hell moments that, to be honest, SHOULD have derailed the movie, but somehow writer/director Joe Carnahan (who helmed the highly-praised cop drama NARC) makes it all work. We get the Loony Toons cartoonish moments where we laugh in how awesomely absurd* they are, and then we get the serious action-moments, and we eat them up.
What with the urinated-on-technicolor cinematography, Carnahan has shot a better Tony Scott movie than Tony Scott has made since MAN ON FIRE. Maybe it helps that while Scott abuses his Avid editing machine to give people migraines, Carnahan uses the camera-filters and editing for a point. I know Scott and his 60+ year old Limey ass with FIRE and DOMINO and DEJA VUE is trying to prove that he can hang out with the younger MTV-inspired directors.
Joe Carnahan just told the old man to quit it. Hell, SMOKIN' ACES is basically TRUE ROMANCE, but without the romance or Tarantino's random-ass movie citations.
One thing I don't get regarding SMOKIN' ACES is why it got so much damn critical hate back in its January release.
Why? Did Carnahan refuse to handjob AICN or kissass CHUD or refused to offer exclusives to some media-hack critic just to get a good write-up? Why it is too that the same people that kiss Tony Scott's ass spit on Joe Carnahan for using Scott's recent schtick and making it BETTER? Maybe because the sites hated the movie, the geeks and their shallow freeminds followed suit.
Then SMOKIN' ACES comes to DVD and is gangbusters, now the geeks are kissing its ass. I could feel righteous, but considering the movie is apparently getting a Straight-to-DVD prequel already....I'll pass.
*=An ADD kid taking Ritalin and becoming a super-fast kung fu machine. I mean, What the hell? Ah screw it, I liked it.
