Smokin' Aces

“How many people does it take to kill one man?” begs the tagline in a desperate attempt to make Smokin’ Aces seem much more focused and cogent than it actually is. Oh, I don’t know. I lost count after the first thousand cardboard cutouts on screen. But wait, there’s more. Just when you imagine the film must have run through every stock character type in the history of American cinema – the black mama (Keys), the Las Vegas snitch (Piven), the Fed with (we presume) only a short time left on the force (Liotta), Ben Affleck – here come the evil neo-Nazis. Fair enough, you think. After all, plenty of directors have made a virtue of cliché and Joe Carnahan’s movie-film appears to be aping the pastiche glories of Sin City or Snatch. Sadly, Smokin’ Aces takes a straightforward genre premise – dying mafia don orders a lucrative hit and every killer in the county rushes in – and turns it into The Blues Brothers 2. After two muddled, overpopulated hours, your patience is ‘rewarded’ with a plot twist that’s more heavily sign-posted than the entire autobahn. The DVD ought to come in a nasty yellow pack box with the words “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Tarantino!” erroneously printed across it.