I didn’t run the trailer for Joe Carnahan’s new film, Smokin’ Aces, when it debuted on Yahoo! last week because I was in Lake Tahoe, seeing Smokin’ Aces and playing blackjack with Carnahan. This means that I will never be able to review the film – you just can’t ethically write a review of a movie after you’ve spent hours drinking and gambling with the director*. In lieu of that review I will tell you that Smokin’ Aces is a balls to the wall movie with a cast that has to be seen to be believed. I told Carnahan that in many ways Smokin’ Aces is like the bloodiest episode of The Love Boat ever made – it has multiple stories, all focused on one location (in this case a hotel/casino) and it’s crammed with famous faces. Unlike The Love Boat, though, Smokin’ Aces has deaths by chainsaw, .50 cal sniper rifle, arm-mounted blade and hundreds of rounds of standard small arms fire.
By the way, in the middle of all these famous faces are three lesser known guys playing The Tremor Brothers, a trio of Nazi sympathizer lunatic overkill assassins whose whole look seems based on Mad Max. Think of them as the bounty hunter from Raising Arizona mixed with the Hanson Brothers from Slap Shot. I feel like McFarlane action figures are in these characters’ future.
You can see the latest trailer for this movie by clicking here. It gives you a hint of how packed this movie is – it’s as if five or six different kinds of crime genre films collided and had an hour-long shoot out. I’m going to have an exclusive interview with Carnahan that I’ll be running as soon as I transcribe it.
And after the footnote, find a number of brand new stills from the film, courtesy of Universal Pictures.
* This isn’t to say that I don’t believe I could be impartial. I know I could write a review of Smokin’ Aces that’s fair and balanced, but not in the Fox News way. The thing is that the perception of being impartial is more important than actually being impartial – ie, I could write a completely fair review of the film but it would still look bad for me to do so after the weekend I just had. This is a line that too many people in the internet film game seem comfortable crossing.
