S-s-s-s-s-mokin!

Ha! I bet you thought this was going to be a review of The Mask. I don't own The Mask, though.


There is a pickup parked in someone's lawn near my neighborhood that's painted camoflauge, and the word "S-s-s-s-s-mokin'" painted on the back. It's so white-trashy it cracks me up.



Anyway, this is actually a review of Smokin' Aces.

I picked this up a while ago, but the wife and I just got around to watching it last weekend. I really didn't know much about it, but I dug the commercials, which summarized the movie as "BLAM! BLAM! EXPLETIVE!" etc.

Well, it wasn't quite as exciting as all that. I had no idea that it had so many well-known or at least easily recognized people in it. I like Jeremy Piven in pretty much everything I've seen him in. You also can't go wrong with Andy Garcia and Ray Liotta, or so you would think. I've never really liked Ryan Reynolds, but he was pretty tolerable up until the end of the movie. My only real expectation for the movie was that it would be non-stop action and violence. It turns out that the movie is a bit slower-paced than that.

Jeremy Piven plays Buddy Israel, a vegas showman who quickly rises ranks in the mafia. To save his own skin, he decides to turn state's evidence, and a price is quickly put on his head bythe ailing kingpin. The high ($1,000,000) bounty attracts all sorts of would-be assassins to take him out, incluing Ben Affleck and Alicia Keys.

Two FBI Agents (Liotta and Reynolds) discover the threat on Israel's life and act to protect him. Things tend to prod slowly along with a few choice scenes here and there; moving towards a gun-totin', glass-shatterin', bullets-flyin' action-packed climax.

All-in-all, I would score the movie 3.5 starts (out of five). It was pretty good, but the action could have been spread out a little better.

Some other notable appearances:

• Jason Bateman (creepy as hell, I miss Arrested Development!)
• Nestor Carbonell (I spent a good portion of the movie trying to remember where I'd seen him before. My wife remembered him from Suddenly Susan. I then remembered him as Bat Manuel from the Tick live-action series)
• Curtis Armstrong (Booger!)
• Wayne Newton (playing himself, but if you blink, you'll miss him)