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I just got blown away by Smokin’ Aces.

I didn’t expect to be. When I put the disc in the DVD player, I expected a passable action-flick (along the lines of Bad Boys), but the opening fifteen minutes or so were so ridiculous that my expectations dropped dramatically. I began to expect that I would be so disgusted by the film that I would look up who directed it and swear a solemn vow never to watch another of his films. Then it ended, and I was forced to look up who directed the flick for precisely the opposite reason.

I am now curious about Blood, Guts, Bullets, and Octane because the title’s neat, and I’m going to have to do more research about Ticker and Narc. It’s not that the direction is amazing or anything like that, but he apparently wrote the screenplay for Smokin’ Aces, and he seems to have written the screenplay for the other movies I listed as well. That combination is hard to pull off without seeming amateurish (and I have no doubt that at least one of those earlier flicks will seem amateurish), but Smokin’ Aces dodges that bullet.

The only problem is the opening sucks. You get introduced to a large number of characters, and most of them seem silly or retarded or both, and they just don’t sell what is going on at all. Three minutes in, I was trying to figure out how it was all a smokescreen, and the mob was just playing with the feds, and I was sure no one was who they seemed to be. Ten minutes in, I realized that everyone was what they seemed, there was no huge surprise, and that the movie was pretty effing dumb. Twelve minutes in, I became stunned by the cartoony-insanity of the characters.

And then the rest of the movie happened, and I realized everyone wasn’t what they seemed. There was some drama between the mob and the feds, and there was even a surprise–not the huge one I expected in the beginning, but it was all the better for that, when I figured it out. I even started to buy into the characters; there was a lot of talent there to sell them. Ryan Reynolds ends up being amazing, Alicia Keys is awesome, Common (”Isn’t that some rapper?” I said) was bad-ass with a small role, Ben Affleck is solid (and he dies! yay!), Ray Liotta’s convincing and well- if under-utilized… the list goes on and on, and that’s why the film works.

Basically, there’s a scum-sucking, lowest-common-denominator of a mob-connected Vegas stage magician (wow, I’m really getting a chance to utilize my love for hyphens, aren’t I?) who has gotten in over his head and decided to become a witness for the FBI against the mob. And there’s a bunch of ridiculous bounty-hunter/assassin-types who are all set to off him. And there’s the FBI, trying to grab him first. And there’s Ben Affleck’s motley crew of ex-Vegas cops, who want to capture him and bring him to his attorney to make sure he doesn’t forfeit his bail.

The assassins are, at first glance, laughable. There’s some dude who puts on other people’s faces. There’s a guy who chewed off his finger-skin so he couldn’t be fingerprinted, after developing a reputation for torture. There is a pair of black chicks who are up-and-comers in the assassination world. And last but certainly not least, there is a trio of brothers who are sorta like the thugs from Repo Man only more insane, more violent, more Nazi-ish, and more on speed.

The above list does not capture how ridiculous they are when they are introduced–but it does sound a lot more ridiculous than they seem by the end of the film. Every single character in this film seems retarded in the beginning, and all of them end up having depth, development, conflict, and believability by film’s end. It’s amazing. If Grindhouse is an homage to the state of genre film-making in the days of yore, Smokin’ Aces is the modern-day successor, minus any pretense. Much of what there is to love about those old-school X-ploitation flicks is present here, plus a helping of depth and believability that those older films don’t have, or at least don’t have anymore.

Mind you, it’s still an unbelievable film. This is over-the-top, cliched, action film-making at its best. And, perhaps because the opening under-sells it so much, it’s amazingly effective. You start out with doubts, possibly even with disgust, but soon you find yourself–dare I say it?–captivated, and thoroughly willing to roll on with the camera and see what happens next without thinking for a second about how ludicrous it all is.

The Nazi-punks never seem anything other than larger-than-life, but they become believable(ish). The blaxploitation assassination team goes from silly to poignant, and the crazy torture guy turns into a haunted figure who is not the stupid idea he starts off looking like. And Affleck gets shot really early on, so the movie has that going for it as well.

I don’t want to act like this film is a work of art. It’s not. I’m tempted to say there’s no such thing, but regardless of that debate, I know what people mean when they talk about artistry, and this film is not that sort of thought-provoking, meaningful, cultural analysis or soulful diatribe or anything like that. It’s just entertainment. But it’s unabashedly over-the-top, lovingly crafted, wonderfully acted, and delightfully fun. This is no Citizen Kane. It’s not even a Last Boyscout (dialog’s not good enough, sorry). But it’s quite intricate for a blow to the face, and quite moving for a slapstick-pastiche, and above all, entertaining.

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