Smokin' Aces in NRO
My review of Smokin' Aces is in NRO this morning. I didn't like it so much:
Late in Smokin’ Aces, a gun-packing, blood-covered neo-Nazi redneck who spends most of the movie costumed in highly decorated bondage wear looks at a man who he’d earlier attempted to kill and, with a sort of apathetic sincerity, apologizes, offering as an excuse, “S*** gets wild and crazy. Fate just up and f***s you for no good reason.” Which is pretty much exactly how I felt after watching the movie. Director Joe Carnahan’s crime romp is a vapid, degenerate foray into wanton nihilism, a movie steeped in senseless, joyless bloodletting and vulgarity. Despite stacking the deck with gobs of attitude, a madcap plot, and a cast of outrageous rogues, it’s a decidedly losing hand.
Labels: movies, shameless self promotion
posted by Peter @ 1/26/2007 08:34:00 AM
3 Comments:
Peter: Your observation on "Aces" fits well with David Bordwell's argument that indie films have become tired, pallid, conventional, nihilistic and mindlessly violent, and that these conventions have bled over into the mainstream to the point where the two are not really very distinguishable. See his meditation on Indie Guignol on his blog:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=339
I know almost nothing about this movie, but could it be some kind of parable about the real Israel (the country)? Sounds like the plot has Israel stuck in the desert being defended by the U.S. government while being brutally attacked on all sides. I was bothered by the trailers I saw on TV where characters make comments like, "Israel must die."
Steve,
I can see how that might have been the intention of the writer, and I suppose if I really, really wanted to go back and sift through the narrative, it might be possible to put together something like that. But the Israel must die stuff was very muted in the movie compared to the trailers, which also sold it as a far more lighthearted, jokey movie than it turned out to be.
D.B. -- thanks for the link. I'll try to take a look at that later. I'm not usually one to rally behind the Tarantino ruined everything and turned gen X movie makers into hipster thugs school of complaint, but Aces was pretty much the perfect example of everything those folks usually rail about.
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