In one of Smokin’ Aces’ few comedic moments, a Ritalin-ridden adolescent boy with glasses and a karate suit makes violent gestures towards an ex-cop. The man had just been shot by some truly scary men, but he seems more scared by this little boy’s antics than anything else.

If we dared take a peak into that kid’s crazy little head, I think the scene we might see is Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces itself. Carnahan’s script feels similarly Ritalin induced. It’s frantic, loud and dialogue heavy – which is always spoken rushed and urgently. The effect, unfortunately, is not intensity: it’s just chaos. The story, although detailed and with multiple character threads, doesn’t consist of anything more than a staging point for a fierce brawl in the third act.

Carnahan has an Ocean’s 11 size stock of characters who simultaneously descend on a Tahoe casino, not to steal, but to kill Buddy Isreal (Jeremy Piven), a mobster gone too deep. Ben Affleck plays one of the members of this circus, a bail bondsman, and phones in his performance all the way to his inconsequential death. And Andy Garcia, working for the FBI, sports an odd accent that I still am not quite sure what to make of.

Carnahan loves his characters, but not as much as he loves killing them. Aces’ glitzy, gratuitous violence recalls Tarantino, but Carnahan fails to make it ironic enough to be meaningful. A couple of the characters who do survive the melee become somewhat disillusioned by the senselessness of it all, but the film doesn’t ever seem to share their attitude. They represent nothing more than a glib conclusion to a story desperate to appeal to an adolescent male audience.

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