Smokin’ Aces

Directed by Joe Carnahan, Smokin’ Aces follows a raft of oddball figures, including Ryan Reynolds’ Richard Messner, Chris Pine’s Darwin Tremor, and Ben Affleck’s Jack Dupree, as they all converge on a Lake Tahoe casino to find and possibly kill a wanted mob informant named Buddy Israel (Jeremy Piven). Filmmaker Carnahan, armed with his own screenplay, delivers an increasingly frenetic actioner that fares best in its exposition-heavy yet promising opening stretch, with the entertaining atmosphere heightened (and then some) by the efforts of a stacked roster of periphery players and Carnahan’s briskly-paced approach to the material. And although the movie has been peppered with a handful of compelling sequences, including a hypnotic confrontation between a deadly assassin (Néstor Carbonell’s El Estrago) and a hapless security guard (Matthew Fox’s Bill), Smokin’ Aces is eventually felled by a midsection and second half that grows more and more exhausting – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by lackluster action and an almost total lack of three-dimensional, sympathetic characters (ie there’s just nobody here for which to root, ultimately). By the time the rather underwhelming climax rolls around, Smokin’ Aces has cemented its place as an almost passable misfire that squanders the efforts of a consistently impressive group of performers.

** out of ****