"Fate just up and f*cks you for no good reason. It's the way of the world!" AKA "Sh*t Happens: The Movie". AKA "Carnahan's Smokin' Somethin' Alright".
This film is inconsistent, trying to be several pockets of films at the same time. When done well like Tarantino, it can produce a fun romp of an adventure that might even turn into a rhythmic symphony; when done poorly like Carnahan, it pulls pack the impact of whatever entertainment you're trying to sell. It tries to be crass, it tries to be over-the-top, then it tries to be convoluted. Pick one style and stick with it, man! I liked the little moments of crassness and hyperbole, but when they're presented in appetizer-sized instances, it dulls the effect and ends up half-measured. If you're going for offensive and dumb crass entertainment anyway, go all the way. Don't just pull your wang out when it's getting good.
The expositional info-dump for the first 40 minutes of the entire film (not exaggerating) was boring. It really dragged the pace of the movie down. I was sitting there sucking my thumb telling the movie to get to the part where they murder each other already. It's not until about the one hour mark, maybe even later, did we finally get to the over-the-top action and crazy shooting stunt-work that got the movie compared to
Shoot 'Em Up. That tiny little 10-15 minute sequence got its Shoot 'Em Up status?! Aw, hell naw! Oh no you didn't! *wags finger* I mean, don't get me wrong, the shooting was fun (you even had a chainsaw kill there), but it was in no way in comparison with the glory of Shoot 'Em Up. Shoot 'Em Up is a satire that did its best to make action movies look dumb; Smokin' Aces is a mess that did its best to make action movies look boring.
That being said... It was still kinda fun. That small moment where the assassins finally kill each other in an epic display of Murphy's Law was sweet, and I can't deny that I enjoyed myself. Things even got a little emotional there with the two female assassins. And yes, I admit that the elevator shoot-up was sorta epic. But these moments were so painfully short, and when taken in a larger context of the story which is essentially about the chaos theory of "things that can go bad will go worse", it doesn't have any impact because it didn't build up enough on the characters enough. Why didn't it build them up enough? Because it spent its time trying to stretch itself into five different kind of stories! I would have love to just watch maybe two or three of those stories and be satisfied.
Israel's characterization actually wasn't that bad, for example. Yes, he's a dick with daddy issues, but due to the excellent performance by Jeremy Piven, he managed to make a pathetic asshole sympathetic. That's pretty impressive acting. And there's also the two assassin sisters who again showed that Carnahan has a small potential (tiny as spices and pepper in your palm, but potential nonetheless), to write emotional (if not necessarily compelling) characters. Emotional characters are an essential ingredient of an action movie (unless your action is over-the-top enough like
Crank to distract from the writing - during our first viewing), so he should have just focused on that specific part of the movie.
Honestly, I want to like the movie because it entertained me in quite a large number of parts (even those outside of the 15 minute shooting sequence, like how exaggerated the assassins' execution styles are), but too many ingredients spoil the soup.
★★★½