Mediocrity...with guns.

I finally Netflixed Smokin' Aces last week, and figured I'd give it a quick review. This is one that I was looking forward to well before it came out, but I somehow never made it to the theater to see it. And it's probably just as well that I didn't.

This movie tries to be eight different kinds of cool, but only achieves moderate success on a few. Coming in to the experience, I was hoping it would be something akin to early Guy Ritchie, and at times, it was just that--a crazy cast of characters all with their own nefarious motives, tied up in a complex plot, and intersecting with each other in a ridiculous blaze of gunfire and yelling and kersplosions. The characters were definitely there--I especially loved the redneck neo-Nazis and Jeremy Piven was great as the magician/wannabe crime boss.

But when I got to the "twist" at the end, my reaction was just, "Oh," when I was really hoping it would be something like, "Holy freakin' crap, that changes everything and now I have to watch the whole thing again!" And really, that's how the whole movie went. Great characters, but none of them gets enough screen time because they're competing with crap like those pointless Ben Affleck and Jason Bateman cameos. A plot that's complex, but not terribly interesting until the end. And a style that's adequate for this kind of film, but doesn't really push any limits or do anything new. So, while I don't feel like it was a waste of my already-paid Netflix bill for the month, I probably would have felt a little cheated if I had shelled out theater money for it.

My rating: 6.2/10
IMDb rating: 6.7/10

The most I'd pay for this movie on DVD: $6

Next up on the Netflix queue: Lord of War.