Movie Review: Hitman Vs Smokin Aces
Had a lot of Thanksgiving cooking to do so as background, I put on some guilty pleasure shoot em up entertainment. First up Hitman, an action packed, hyper-violent totally gratifying videogame of a movie. It actually had a plot, which was about a genetically engineered gun-for-hire known only as Agent 47. He’s part of an elite group of assassins who as children got identifying bar-codes tattooed on the back of their heads and were trained in martial arts and the use of firearms. Agent 47 is hired to kill the Russian President but becomes embroiled in a political conspiracy. He’s pursued by a handsome Interpol agent, Dougray Scott and there are enough twists and turns to keep you interested without going WTF? at the end. Oh, and Timothy Olyphant cast as the cold blooded and then conflicted killer was a good call and looks surprisingly good bald.
For round 2 of Food Network I tuned in to Smokin’ Aces. Hated it! Bad on so many levels. First the plot which is about a shady magician, or stand up comic, I’m not sure which played by Jeremy Piven, of Entourage fame, who is about to rat on the mob. Before he’s taken into protective custody, he goes to the casinos at Lake Tahoe for a final fling drawing a crowd of assassins hunting him for a bounty. From the assassins, FBI agents, mobsters and random others, there were too many characters to keep straight. And jumping back to the past in order to try to explain the current indecipherable story and the excessive shifts and twists only served to confuse. Stupid slo-mo gory shoot-outs and jumpy camera tricks screamed "look at what I can do". The movie shoulda been better since it had a decent cast. But Ryan Reynolds was just plain bad and Andy Garcia worse. He was improbably cast as a southern lawman with an odd, unintentional Spanish accent. On the plus side, Common and Alicia Keys are hot and together and should be each other’s baby mama-baby daddy.
