Smokin’ Aces has only a 28 per cent approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes and that pisses me off.

Why must every movie I like be reviled? And why must every bad, inept movie be number one at the box office for four weeks in a row?

Even the “positive” reviews at RT are backhanded. “Will not disappoint fans of mayhem and bloody contract killing madmen,” writes another internet reviewer. The consensus derived from all these critiques seems to be that the film starts out wild and crazy, but is sure to wear out the viewer as it gets more and more absurd and out of control. “Overstays its welcome,” is how Variety put it. But I think these reviews have it all wrong. It is at this point of supposed absurdity that Smokin’ Aces actually gets good, as amid the gunplay there is an overpowering sense of sadness as various unorthodox “couples” in the film lose their partners as all those around them are losing their heads.

Another thing that pisses me off is the phrase Tarantinoesque, which I am always careful to try and use properly. These days the term is used promiscuously for just about any crime film that has young people in it, or that features older stars resurrected for a bit part, or has lengthy sequences of pop culture dialogue, or scenes of gross unexpected violence alternating with clashing black humor, none of which are qualities necessarily invented by Tarantino, by the way. But really, if anything isn’t the film more like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, making it … Ritchiesque?

But does the following description sound Tarantinoesque or even Ritchiesque? Many years ago, the FBI took a raw recruit, pretended to kill him, and then altered his face and sent him undercover in order to spy on the mob, where surprisingly he rose to the rank of a Mafia don. Along the way he had an illegitimate son. Named Buddy Israel, the son grew up to become a Las Vegas magician. While working in Vegas he grew friendly with various mobsters. Inspired by their example, Israel embarks on his own life of crime, financing various robberies. But eventually he is cornered by the law, and in order to escape various penalties, he has agreed to rat out his former mentors and his closest advisor among the mobsters. Meanwhile, his biological father suffers in a hospital ward for want of a key organ transplat. Knowing that Israel is about to snitch, the mob leaders agree among themselves that Israel must be killed. Since he is under protective custody in a Lake Tahoe penthouse suite, the mob believe that he is something of an easy target and proceed to acquire a hit squad to assassinate him. Word of the million dollar price on his head leaks out, and freelance hit people and bounty hunters plan to converge on the hotel. The gangsters are reckless, however, and discuss the matter openly on their telephones, within earshot of two FBI surveillance officers.

At this point, the film begins. But the rest of the film is not solely gunplay and black humor with bits of backstory plastered into the cracks. It’s a story that transforms from delirium to dirge as bodies drop, and the expense of loyalty is added up. The film, in fact, is about clashing loyalties, an agency’s to its own versus individual agents to each other, hired killers to each other, bosses to their body guards, men of crime to their underlings. With careful applications of poignant music some of it borrowed from Ennio Morricone, director Joe Carnahan’s film turns elegiac, particularly when focused on the canvas of Ryan Reynolds’s face. He’s one of the two FBI agents listening in on the gangsters and his partner is played by Rat Liotta. The anguish and anger Reynolds evinces in the wake of Liotta’s fate is the point of the movie.

Yes, Smokin’ Aces is fast paced. It is hectic and multilayered and demands that you keep up. The film is all about transitions as Carnahan links scenes by asking questions in a shot or location that are answered at the start of the next scene. And it has a vast cast that partially includes Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Common, Peter Berg, Andy Garcia, Alex Rocco, and Alicia Keys among many others, making the movie one we will probably look upon years hence and say, “Wow, was he in that, too?”

I don’t know if Smokin’s Aces is a great movie. All I know is that the film surprised me (the trailer is a tad misleading), and that it requires multiple viewings just to begin to digest it. And I also know that like other past films denigrated as mere Tarantino rip offs, such as Way of the Gun, it has a spirit and atmosphere that is increasingly rare in films, an exploration of the glue that holds society together, as manifested in the unspoken loyalty of people to each other and its cost as the society contrives to undermine it.

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