SMOKIN' ACES, a nihilistic slice of violent frivolity, is OCEAN'S 11 on crack. Twitchy, messy and uneven, it's an action flick that just won't shut up. The movie is somewhat saved by a smarttering of wacky minor characters and humorous bits of non-essential business, but they don't add up to a satisfying experience.

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Four years ago, US writer-director Joe Carnahan gave us the tough and unsentimental cop drama NARC. Now he has followed it up with a fatuous piece of nasty nonsense without a smidgen of that film's intelligence. It's a smirkingly violent ensemble action-comedy that leaves a very strange taste in the mouth. (...) all we are offered is a stupid, ugly and boring picture with all the interest and subtlety of a PlayStation game, in which all the sketchily drawn characters are unconvincing ciphers.

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Perhaps Carnahan thought he would shock with his non-stop assault on the senses. True, there is plenty of colour and vigour to the shootout, but very little point. This is what is so disappointing about SMOKIN' ACES: a lot of money has been spent on something which is essentially vacuous and out-of-date. It's been correctly pointed out elsewhere that it has the feel of a Guy Ritchie film, and unfortunately the film in question is REVOLVER.

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Pour raconter son histoire, Joe Carnahan (NARCO) a conçu un moule attrayant. On sent que chaque scène a été étudiée et filmée avec soin. (...) Rien à reprocher du côté de la cinématographie donc, si ce n'est que le réalisateur fait, grâce à son esprit méticuleux, l'apologie de la violence. Certaines scènes sont exagérément longues. Les personnages du bon et du mauvais côté de la force n'en finissent plus d'agoniser. C'est L'INCONNU DE LAS VEGAS de Steven Soderbergh, mais en plus cruel, plus sanglant, livré maladroitement. Et avec des acteurs (toute une brochette néanmoins) moins bien dirigés. Qui semblent parfois l'avoir pris vraiment trop au sérieux cette chasse au trésor. Dans bien des scènes, la prétention prend le dessus sur le plaisir. On trouve difficilement le ton entre la comédie noire ou l'histoire purement violente.

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SMOKIN' ACES blows some cool smoke rings until it makes the very un-cool mistake of overstaying its welcome. Style and attitude, pegged to a baroque plot concerning an FBI plan to snare a key mob witness that attracts a virtual convention of world-class killers, burns up a lot of screen time but amounts to little more than some sensational scenes. (...) Much anticipated by fans of writer-director Joe Carnahan's (...) NARC (...), pic is far more under the sway of Quentin Tarantino's color-saturated bang-bang cinema than the helmer's previous work. Tarantino's shadow can be a dangerous thing: A better influence on Carnahan might have been author Elmore Leonard and his flair for weaving terrific story strands with vividly wrought characters.

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