Smokin' Aces
Universal Pictures | Release Date: January 26, 2007 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
15
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
A cheerfully disposable gangland freak-show thrill ride that's been directed by the gifted Joe Carnahan (Narc) as if he were trying to give the audience a seizure. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Best consumed with pizza and lots of brewskis, Joe Carnahan's Smokin' Aces is shamelessly and unapologetically a guy movie. It's lewd, crude and loaded with shootouts and hot lesbo action. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
For rip-snorting pop entertainment, it's one discomfiting, nasty piece of work, and ain't that a kick in the head. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Even more nihilistic and confused than "Narc," and yet a lot better. It's better for some specific and interesting reasons. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunChris Kaltenbach
It's hard to figure where it's going, and when the movie's over, it's even harder figuring where it's been. But the careening roller-coaster ride calling itself Smokin' Aces is such a hoot to be on, who really cares? Read full review
70
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It's kind of like a hit man's Olympics. Isn't this grown-up? In a word, no, and that's what's so much fun about it. Read full review
67
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
There are movies that reach for the top. There are movies that go over the top. And then there is Smokin' Aces, a slick, shallow and sometimes quite enjoyable action film that is so far beyond over-the-top that it likely mistook the top for the bottom as it burst through it on its way to who knows where. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
Someone should check Joe Carnahan for performance enhancement drugs. Smokin' Aces, the wild ride of a movie he scripted and directed, is so pumped up, manic and mayhem-packed that it practically shoots sweat off the screen. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
There's no question Carnahan has an eye for composition, an ear for dialogue and a sense of pace that, if put to better use, could make an audience beg for relief. But the characters in Smokin' Aces are about as lifelike as the occupants of vehicles destroyed in a car-safety test. Read full review
60
The New YorkerDavid Denby
In 2002, Carnahan made an intense and violent little cop film, "Narc," with Jason Patric and Ray Liotta. He seemed to have absorbed the influences of John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese and come up with a style of his own. I was a fan of that movie, but Smokin’ Aces feels like Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" pushed much further along into lethal absurdity. Read full review
60
VarietyRobert Koehler
Smokin' Aces blows some cool smoke rings until it makes the very un-cool mistake of overstaying its welcome. Read full review
60
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
Carnahan does have an oddball sense of comic timing; what his picture lacks in hilarity it recuperates with a well-developed, albeit mumbling, sense of the absurd. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
While the film bristles with cinematic verve, it also is as second-hand as an antique store. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Smokin' Aces is Tarantino lite - a vague and unsuccessful attempt to bring together a bunch of offbeat, unrelated characters in a situation where a bloody resolution is inescapable. Read full review
50
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
A roller-coaster ride that goes on far too long, ends with a colossal crash, then follows that wreck with a lecture explaining the physics of the machinery. My head was spinning for multiple reasons, none of them pleasing. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerSean Axmaker
Smokin' Aces isn't a story, it's a premise with a madhouse of characters flung into a collision course that ends at the same finish line. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
This film was not based on a video game, but that's the vibe and the aesthetic at work here: YEAH! KILL!, followed by a few muttered expressions of the horror, the horror. Read full review
50
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Spends too much time straddling the line between exuberant carnage and serious plotline when it should've gleefully backflipped into the former. Grudgingly recommended, but only if you've put your cerebral cortex in neutral for the evening. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley Morris
Sadly, more than an hour of this movie is given over to talking. And not the wink-wink Quentin Tarantino kind, either. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jennie Punter
Twitchy, messy and uneven, it's an action flick that just won't shut up. The movie is somewhat saved by a smattering of wacky minor characters and humorous bits of non-essential business, but they certainly don't add up to a satisfying experience. Read full review
50
PremiereEthan Alter
To be fair, Smokin' Aces isn't a complete train wreck. Carnahan stages a handful of strong action set-pieces, most notably a close-quarters elevator shoot-out involving Liotta and Flanagan, that are a blast to watch. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The plot tangles until it seems irrelevant, the jokes can't push through the somber tone, and the most interesting moment apart from the action scenes involves one character using the corpse of one of the more famous cast members for a grisly ventriloquist act. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarrit Ingman
Half the time the movie wants to be balls-out weird, and it is. But the other half – the half with the good guys – is plodding procedural fare. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKevin Crust
It's a grindhouse-inspired concoction that may not contain a shred of originality, but it is executed with unbridled bombast and glee. Read full review
38
New York PostLou Lumenick
In the hands of the formerly promising director Joe Carnahan, this stylish, nihilistic, hugely derivative mash-up of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie (before wife Madonna ruined his career) is fun for roughly half an hour. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Based on this outing, writer-director Joe Carnahan (Narc) can't tell a story worth a damn--especially not a complicated mishmash like this one. Read full review
30
SlateDana Stevens
Smokin' Aces is awash in ammo and carnage, but it chugs to the finish line with a tank full of sludge. Read full review
25
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The film tries to be stylish and slick, but is mostly just nasty and blood-drenched. Piven, so funny in other film roles and on TV's "Entourage," overdoes it here, and extended scenes of his debauchery grow excessive and thuddingly dull. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldPeter Debruge
The hyper-stylized violence, for instance, isn't nearly as senseless as the narrative bits in between. And the ''twist'' employs the same sleight-of-hand as "The Usual Suspects." Read full review
20
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Calling Joe Carnahan's movie heartless implies that this auteur of affectless anarchy might have meant to invest it with detectable human feelings, and failed. Better to call it heart-free.
10
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
A Viagra suppository for compulsive action fetishists and a movie that may not only be dumb in itself, but also the cause of dumbness in others. Read full review
10
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Again and again the killers linger sadistically over the dead or dying bodies of the people they've dispatched. Did Carnahan think these sickening scenes would give Smokin' Aces a moral complexity that's generally absent from this genre? I think they make the picture seem even more morally bankrupt. Read full review
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