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Review

Duration: 8:16

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"Smokin Aces" (2006) written and directed by Joe Carnahan is an epic thrill ride featuring an all star cast. There is heavy inspiration from Quentin Tarantino and I felt the film also inspired "John Wick" (2014).

An illusionist performer named Buddy Israel (Jeremy Piven) becomes an informant in snitching against the mob. This provokes various parties into wanting him dead or alive, depending on who they are. Agent Messner (Ryan Reynolds) works with the FBI to try and secure him, while many other groups of bounty hunters saddle up for war. We eventually learn the full story, which involves an old mobster from the 1940s who was shot dead in the street.

Smokin' Aces can come off as an intimidating watch but I whole heartedly enjoyed it and highly recommend it to anyone who likes over the top graphic and rigid shootout films. This is a piece of media which definitely glorifies violence, so you also have to be okay with that in order to appreciate it. I respected the film a lot for it's refusal to hold back, and for unapologetically being itself despite possible backlash. The cast were the reason to come and they were the reason to stay, they were all excellent and shared the screen equally except for Ben Affleck & Jason Bateman who were barely in it which disappointed me.

The action is pure octane and there were several scenes that felt like violence = art, which was great in this context. Despite there being so many characters, I felt they were all memorable and served a purpose. The elevators and general linkage between everyone's stories were genius. This is a gritty and severe movie for adults but it still has a sense of humor which I appreciated.

Smokin’ Aces is a standout in the action genre in my opinion. It's like a slightly more modern version of "Pulp Fiction" (1994) but it did some unique things and did not feel directly derivative to me.

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