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If Smokin' Aces is of any implication as to what the action genre is going to be like in the future, I'm in! Aces delivered smashingly good action, deep, layered characters, all frostcovered with a layer of humour. Never have I seen action quite the way it was in this film. This movie built up to the last 30 action-filled minutes for about 80 minutes, during which we barely got any action at all. It worked perfectly, because the small glimpses along the way that we received worked brilliantly in building up to something, and we knew that whatever it was going to be was going to be awesome. And it sure was. I will not spoil any of the action, but it is surprisingly gory for a seemingly hollywood-like action flick, and it's also incredibly intense. Carnahan really did some spectacular choices in this movie besides that as well. For example the characters that we get, primarily the hitmen in this case. Usually in movies they have these gimmick-like things, that are just that; gimmicks. They're just there because a regular hitman would be somewhat boring. But here they became something more than that. Perhaps it was because of the great cast or the witty screenplay, but the gimmicks truly became a part of the actual characters. Israel was a marvellous character as well, a desperate soul, and Piven portrayed him spot-on. There was also a twist ending in Smokin' Aces, which I hate most of the time. But here it felt sensible, but remained unpredictable. I quite liked it. And after the twist had come out, we got an audiovisually brilliant, emotionally touching sequence that made Ryan Reynolds a good actor in my books.
I will not go too much to the actors, since there are far too many to mention individually; this movie is absolutely packed with great performances from character actors who feel right at home with who they play. Ryan Reynolds pretty much established himself as an extremely cool actor with this movie, something he miserably failed in doing in Blade III. Piven was wonderful as the human McGuffin of the movie, Buddy Israel. He has an amazing ability to morph himself according to the character that he plays, and here it really showed. The rapper of which I've never heard of before, Common, was surprisingly charismatic in his role as Israel's personal assistant. But by far the biggest surprise performance in this movie is done by another musician whom I never expected to see on the big screen: Alicia Keys. That's righ, that Falling-chick. She does a splendid performance as a hitwoman who doesn't necessarily enjoy her job just as much as the neonazi Tremor-brothers, who seemingly kill just for the heck of it. Also, props to the wonderful score composed by Clint Mansell, better know for working together with the Kronos Quartet in the drug movie Requiem For A Dream, for his awesome musical score. Especially the song at the end of the movie (which you can listen to at Clint's myspace page) worked marvellously, at least on an audiovisual level.
Overall, Smokin' Aces is an extremely enjoyable popcorn movie, that you should see, as long as you aren't the type to pass out in case blood appears on the screen. It's my favourite action movie of the year so far, alongside the Zack Snyder epic, 300. That should already tell you something about this movies quality.
8/10
