Seen: April 17th, 2007
Format: HD-DVD
Rating: 6
I settled in and prepared to turn my mind off for a few hours and enjoy some good old fashioned crazy stone killin'. The previews looked loose and fast, and I can handle that. It may not be art, but hey, that's OK.
And that's what I got. For a while. Sorta.
I really wanted Smokin Aces' to be more like Shaun of the Dead. I wanted a bunch of weird and violent people to converge in one spot at the same time and then to sit back and enjoy the ensuing furball. And that does happen, but there's a lot of other stuff as well.
Somewhere in the writing process, Carnahan felt that the stage needed to be explicitly set. So the first chunk of the film is all about introducing characters and situations, the Exposition. There's a bunch of narrative that serves solely to set the stage for the Convergence. There's some actual characterization here, but really we're mainly given vignettes and voice-over which tells us who the characters are. There's a bunch of them, and this all moves pretty quickly. I guess it's difficult to justify a lot of time creating something you're just going to throw away in the next 20 minutes of so. There's a little back story as well, which will ultimately become the base of the Justification.
The Convergence begins shortly after this. There are a few surprises and a little general weirdness to keep you entertained. Then it all slows down. And stays slow. NOW we start to develop some characterization, start to work with a few of these people. I guess this is OK, but this is the point where I'm getting ramped up for confrontation. Maybe this is designed to create tension, but it just made me impatient. Things move, but slowly for awhile.
The begins the Confusion. Here we get some detail and movement around the why. This was started in the Exposition. This is actually boring and generally tedious. There's details and minor deviation that really just don't matter to the direction or tone of the film. Again, this is used to provide expand characterization and that really isn't needed, and that I really didn't buy anyway.
Finally the Furball. It does all eventually hit the fan. It's slow and deliberate in some cases, fast and chaotic in others. It all converges pretty well. It's going kind of like we expected, though there's a few off bits. Then, when we're ready for the final aria and mop-up, it all slows down and gets tricky. This is the Justification.
This phase really didn't work for me. A whole new underlying plot is exposed. We're shown how clever it is via the classic "obvious hints you should have picked up on earlier in the film" montage. My best guess is that Carnahan felt there needed to be a more important reason for all the chaos, for all the participation. There had to be something complex and intriguing to make it all interesting. It all falls apart for me here.
It's a shame really. There are great characters here. Some are weird little throw aways, some are idiosyncratic hitmen, dense flunkies, twisted drunks, and the list goes on. There's a great, straightforward driving force. This is all that was really needed. The extra stuff just derails the film. Attempts at compassion, repentance, justice, they're all just distractions. They get in the way try to add something high-brow to what's basically a lower-brow film. And you don't need that to have a fun film.
Look at Gumball Rally.
The Good: Old fashioned shoot 'em up...
The Bad: ...with a conscience.
The Ugly: Dealing death from up close, close up and far, far away.....
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