Smokin' Aces DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

When I first saw the phenomenal trailer for this movie last year, I was stoked for many reasons. First, this is the superb filmmaker Joe Carnahan's follow-up film to his astounding debut NARC, which might not have been the case if he would've stayed on with Mission: Impossible III. Second, the cast is just huge and diverse and amazing and third, it's a throwback to the explotation films of old, a trend that seems to be en vogue lately with flicks like Black Snake Moan and Grindhouse. Sadly, this flick and those two all have flopped, so this trend might be short-lived. Still, that doesn't take away the fact that this is just one amazing powder keg of a movie.

This is just balls-to-the-wall filmmaking here. Just the array of firepower displayed in the movie, the different, unique brands of guns used, almost make it worth watching just for that aspect. If there's but one aspect of the movie that's flawed, it's the rapid-fire dialogue and pacing that zings us through the movie a little too swiftly at times. It's almost like if Aaron Sorkin took some speed and wrote a shoot-em-up actioner, it'd be in the same vein as this. But, don't get me wrong here. You catch on plenty with this movie, and it's just a damn-good time.

The story revolves around a magician named Buddy "Aces" Isreal, who made some enemies in Vegas, mob enemies by snitching to the feds, and now is looking a $1 million contract out on his head. A contract that big brings plenty cleaners out of the woodwork looking for a payday, and that means that the feds have to beat them to the punch, or they'll lose the most valuable witness in a case that could very well shut down the mafia once and for all in this country. So we have cadres of men on both sides of the law all racing to Lake Tahoe, to see who gets their prize of Buddy Isreal first.

It's a throwback flick to the extreme, folks. Writer-director Joe Carnahan has basically given us a modern-day shoot-em-up flick where anything goes and everything is on the line. While the script is speedier than I would've liked, we get an impressive array of characters, a slick plotline with plenty of twists capped off by a superb ending. It doesn't hurt at all, either, that those characters are played by a smashing ensemble cast. We get wonderful turns from Jeremy Piven as the eccentric, strung out Buddy Isreal, Alicia Keyes and Taraji P. Henson as chick hitters to take out Isreal, Ryan Reynolds and Ray Liotta as feds trying to protect Isreal, rapper Common as Isreal's bodyguard, Jason Bateman as a wacked out lawyer and Andy Garcia as the deputy director of the FBI, but there's one performance I wish I would've seen more of. Chris Pine is just sensational here as Darwin Tremor, leader of the Tremor triad of hitmen, along with his brothers Jeeves (Kevin Durand) and Lester (Maury Sterling). If there were just two reasons to see this movie, one would be the awesome gunfights and the guns and the second would be one absolutely brilliant part with Pine mimicking the facial features of a dead Ben Affleck, who plays a small part as a bail bondsman. It's absolutely hilarious and I just know that scene had to take forever and a day to complete. While we don't see much from Pine throughout, he just shines whenever he's on screen, and we'll surely be hearing a lot more from him in the near future.

Smokin' Aces is one of my favorite movies of the year. Yeah, I know. It didn't make jack for bank and the critics drubbed it. I don't care. I'm a guy and this, my guy friends, is one of the most ultimate guy movies you'll ever come across. It's packed to the brim with testosterone, exploding through the screen with every macho line or gunfight, and I frickin loved every second of it. Still, that's just the undercurrent, flowing beneath a slickly-told story with an amazing cast. It's a ton of entertainment, guys, but don't expect your girlfriends to like it much.

We get a solid amount of features here. First up we get four Deleted and Extended Scenes. All together those four scenes are just under 10 minutes and only one of which, the first one dubbed Longer Bar Sequence, is worth watching. The rest are either too short or too worthless.

Outtakes are next and after the first few lame ones, we get some great ones towards the beginning with Ben Affleck failing to make any shots in pool, and many other great outtakes. Some are pretty lame, sure, but there's more than enough entertainment in those nine minutes to make it worth your while.

The Cowboy Ending is next, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. It's only a minute long, and much much less dramatic than the actual ending. I'm sure you can get a pretty good idea of how this ends, just by the title alone, but yeah. It would've been a very dramatic statement to end the movie on, but it might have worked, with the pace and flow of the flick.

The Line-Up is next, and these are a bunch of featurettes, going a little more in-depth with the main players. Buddy Isreal has his own featurette, but the rest are broken into groups, with Bounty Hunters, The Feds, Lethal Ladies and The Tremor Brothers. They're all between two and three minutes long, or so and it's just those individuals describing their characters for a spell. The Tremor Brothers one is the best, as they're in character and have this weird incredibly happy music as a backdrop. It's some pretty good stuff here, nice, succinct, to the point.

The Big Gun is next, and it's a featurette with the writer-director Joe Carnahan. We go through some days of filming, sort of like a video diary in some parts, and other parts has Carnahan giving insights into the inception of the movie and, most importantly, we just really see how much damn fun he has at his job. It's an 11-minute feature and it's just a joy to watch, to see how much fun this movie HAD to be making, and the filmmaker that had the most fun of all.

Lastly here we get Shoot 'Em Up: Stunts and Effects, which talks about the crazy guns in the flick, and the training some of them went through for the movie. We also get some interesting insight into Mr. Affleck since they say, before this movie, he had never died on camera and had never been "squibbed" before, which is weird since he's had such a big career. It's a nice little 5 minute feature to end on.

The disc is presented in the anamorphic widescreen format, in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 format.

This is a great, eye-popping design here, folks. We have a big title card cutting through almost at the midpoint and above it we get some wonderful random action shots of Jeremy Piven, Alicia Keyes and Ryan Reynolds, set against colorful backdrops, and below it we get the same with Common and all of the Tremor Brothers. It's a real visual grabber that, at the very least, gets you intrigued. The back is a little lame, actually. We get a small special features box on the top, along with a brief synopsis, some small, random shots, plus a big critics quote above the billing block and tech specs. The front is great, but the back, not so much.

This is just a fantastic movie, folks. You won't find deep meaning, or teardrops or passionate kisses... well, I don't think there are any kisses here, actually. There is nothing flowery or syrupy about this movie. This is a crime flick that's both gritty and witty, that pulls no punches and goes for the jugular. The kind of bravery Joe Carnahand had to display this kind of material in modern cinema is, at very least, commendable, and, while theatrically not many people felt the same way I do, I hope on DVD that more will.