Smokin' Aces (2007, USA)

The hell? There’s so much randomness in this movie, it distracts from what should be a pretty straightforward shoot ‘em up. Cops and hitmen alike are after one very fucked-up Jeremy Piven, for reasons both obvious and . . . slightly less obvious (the twist at the end is rather blatant). Scattered, bloody, and generally half-assed, Smokin' Aces is yet another example of what Tarantino has wrought on contemporary cinema – my only real question is how the hell Joe Carnahan got all of these people to sign up for a write-off project like this – Piven, Andy Garcia, Ray Liotta, Ben Affleck, Ryan Reynolds . . . Alicia Keys? Matthew Fox? Jason Bateman? (Actually, the Bateman scenes are kind of hilarious, but maybe just for big fans of Arrested Development.)

I’ve seen one of Carnahan’s previous films, the solid, if generally by-the-numbers, cop drama Narc, and don’t quite understand how he got from point A to point B. But at least Ray Liotta’s getting work again. Right? Right?