SMOKIN’ ACES: Aces for the kids, a bad hand for the rest of you. |
Perhaps Joe Carnahan pitched his follow-up to 2002’s Narc as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World by way of Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, and bad wigs. If so, he pulled a nice trick on his financiers, since the resulting mess is the ineptly edited tale of another magician, fugitive Buddy “Aces” Israel (Entourage’s Jeremy Piven), a coke-headed Vegas showman and “the great white whale of Mafia snitches.” Emerging from the rogue’s-gallery ghetto to collect a $1 million bounty: the bail bondsman (Ben Affleck), the cross-dressing lawyer (Jason Bateman), the hitman/chameleon (Tommy Flanagan), the hitwoman/lesbian (Alicia Keys), the patriotic feds (Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds), and three neo-Nazi refugees from The Big Lebowski. It’s a loud, “hip” gunshot barrage of –– well, gunshots. Lots of them. Plus spilled viscera and a needless wrap-up grumbled by Andy Garcia in an Al Pacino patois. The kids will think it’s aces; for everyone else, it’s a bad hand.
