Before I begin, I'd just like to apologize if this review seems incomplete. I saw "Because I Said So" immediately after seeing this and I'm pretty sure part of my brain that's responsible for memory retention has disintegrated as a result.

I suppose if director Joe ("Narc") Carnahan were submitting this film for entry into the Guy Ritchie Film Festival, he might get in. You just have to figure that such a festival is going to have a whole list of crap that's going straight to video anyway and quite frankly, I can think of many things I've seen that went straight to video ("Love & a .45" comes to mind) that were better than "Smokin' Aces."

My assumption is that when you're able to get as many stars in your film as Carnahan has, somebody releases it. Unfortunately, this is the same philosophy you'd have if you were a chef and figured that if you took every top quality ingredient you could think of and just put it in the same dish it would taste great.

In "Smokin' Aces," a hit has been put out on Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven) and a number of top assassins have come out for the job including Georgia Sykes (Alicia Keys), Jack Dupree (Ben Affleck), a group of neo-Nazis, and a variety of others I need not detail. FBI agents Donald Carruthers (Ray Liotta) and Richard Messner (Ryan Reynolds) are sent to Israel's penthouse suite by Assistant Director Locke (Andy Garcia) to provide additional protection, I think. Frankly, I'm not sure if I have that right, because by this point the sheer inanity of the plot was starting to give me vertigo.

From there ensues a whole shitload of shooting between the police and the assassins that ends with one character finally explaining the secret of the whole story, which lands with the kind of dull thud one would get dropping an empty box on the floor. Ultimately, it all feels like the kind of empty desperation one would expect to permeate a rehab center for spray paint addicts, death row at a maximum security prison, or a Guy Ritchie Film Festival.