Fizzling gun fest fails to ignite

Reviewed - Smokin' Aces:BEGINNING with frozen images of various colourfully homicidal characters accompanied by a lengthy, supposedly hip voice-over, the new thriller from Joe Carnahan, director of the perfectly decent Narc, forcefully establishes itself as the sort of film which will cause viewers to muse on how much certain people have to answer for.

You know who we are talking about, Mr Tarantino. Where do you think you're going, Mr Ritchie? Get back here and explain yourselves.

Chaotically detailing the attempts of several novelty murderers to dispatch a mobster who is planning to turn snitch, the film comes across like a fancy-dress party to which has-beens (Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia), hopefuls (Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman) and people who aren't actors (Alicia Keys, Common) have come dressed as their favourite post-Quentin cliche. Keys is a glamorous, foul-mouthed lesbian. Liotta is the wise-ass federal agent. Jeremy Piven, cinema's current second-banana-in-chief, twitches nervously as the wired supergrass.

The characters are not particularly amusing and, more damagingly, no two establish any kind of relationship worth caring about. This is one of those too-common films where a lot of villains do a lot of stuff, but never the kind of stuff out of which proper stories are made.

Still, it is fast, energetic and features enough ordnance to, if nothing else, keep the viewer awake. Piven spends the film cowering in an apartment at the top of a Lake Tahoe casino and the film does manage to make something of that underused Nevada location.

Indeed, Smokin' Aces might be just tolerable enough to become the object of some stupid cult. After all, Guy Ritchie's Snatch - more jabbering sub-Tarantino tomfoolery - has remained stubbornly popular with stoned boys. My money, however, is on it ending up in the same unhappy wasteland as Two Days in the Valley and Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead.