
Hollywood Reporter
While the film bristles with cinematic verve, it also is as second-hand as an antique store...
Full reviewAn uber stylish gangster film which ‘Narc’ director Carnahan boldly described as the type of film Fellini would have made, had he made an action film. Very bold. A string of interlocking stories centre around a dying mob boss’ (Ruskin) one million dollar bounty put upon his former protégé Buddy ‘Aces’ Israel (Piven). Buddy, a Vegas magician turned gangster, has greed to testify against the mob. The FBI (including Reynolds & Liotta) attempt to protect their key witness as an array of aging and new hit men and women descend on Lake Tahoe, in a race to take Buddy out.
While the film bristles with cinematic verve, it also is as second-hand as an antique store...
Full reviewSmokin' Aces plays like the dream project of an angry, bloodthirsty Tarantino-idolising teenager aspiring to be a film-maker...
Full reviewJoe Carnahan stumbled with his first big-budget feature, "Narc," a nihilistic, incoherent thriller, but he's back with "Smokin' Aces," which is even more nihilistic and confused than "Narc," and yet a lot better. It's better for some specific and interesting reasons...
Full reviewBest consumed with pizza and lots of brewskis, Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces is shamelessly and unapologetically a guy movie. It's lewd, crude and loaded with shootouts and hot lesbo action...
Full reviewFull respect to Carnahan for making the tired crime genre feel fresh, but it would have been more fun without a last-minute attempt to make it mean something...
Full reviewCarnahan aims for a Tarantino-style black comedy but wildly misses the mark. Instead of crafting characters to laugh with (or at, even) he indulges a sniggering schoolboy obsession with casual mutilation and silly wigs (ref. Matthew Fox). After this garish carnival of drooling lunacy, he then has the nerve to angle for pathos...
Full reviewSmokin' Aces is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV.
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