In 52 cards, this deck was full of Smoking Aces

by: bamf 1 year, 6 months, 1 week, 16 hours, 59 minutes ago

 

Bamf here rematerializing from the void...


I love the film that starts with little or no credits.  Right after the Coca-Cola commercial has reminded you that there hasn’t been a influential black leader since 1963 and talking heads have brow beated the notion you are not doing enough to support children who have cancer, the show starts.  Then screen fades from black.  When you are thrust into a story without the preamble of a cast, editor, director, it creates an experience likened to sitting in the playhouse watching the curtains draw back.  Smoking Aces is a character piece of rich dynamic personalities where not just one actor steals the show, they all do. 


While taking in the vastly different performances you get to hold preview to the next generation of great actors.  Depending on the breaks and future role decisions, Joe Carnahan put together a troupe of talent that will resonate into our future film viewings.  The axiom that every Pro athlete wants to be a rapper, while every rapper wants to be a pro athlete should be revised as every rapper should want to sell their last rhyme and reach to achieve the talent that Common is displaying.  Its still early, and Ill reserve final judgment until he’s the Gay lead, or the neurotic sidekick, but that man has the chops.  Alicia Keys was another surprise as she took on a role that isn’t prototypical to a singer/actor crossover like Eminem in 8mile or Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.  Both musicians showed solid promise for things to come.


Now as for the film in its self.  With so many characters to deal with like a 22 episode arch in television, being both writer as well as director gave Carnahan all of the tools needed to execute his vision effortlessly.  The first 20 minutes holds about as much information as you could handle in the first 4 episodes of 44 minutes in television and must have been a taxing chore to execute.  Through clever use of dialogue, juxtaposition of plot elements and props; with transitions between scenes never dissolved or swiped, the story moves forward at a rumble of a pace that keeps the audience in step with methods of story telling that hearken back to Huxley’s Brave New World. 


Smoking Aces shows the visceral and the surreal, the damned and the delusional.


The film shows the new breed of Hollywood in all of its attributes.  From cast to cut it’s a worthwhile experience.  The established names were given free reign to do something a little different (but what was up with Gracias off Pacino accent??) and new talent showing they are the future big players in a homogenized industry. We can feel lucky that Henderson, Berg, Bateman and perhaps even Halberstadt receive future projects that will exercise their talents further.  And oh ya, Ryan Reynolds: sexiest beard in Hollywood.  Yes Reynolds does the lords work on your woman so your night becomes a little more easier to find that wondrous spot under satin sheets.


Ever more the supporting roles I have seen, have at sometimes outshined the principles of the story.  I’m talking about Rufus Sewell in The Illusionist, Gael Garcia Bernal from Babel, and that snake that bit the gentlemen’s junk in Snakes on a Plane.  All show stealers in their own right. 


The only thing missing from Smoking Aces was Terrance Howard, but what it did not lack was, story, character and depth with adrenalin.