Sadly Over-hyped

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie really had some potential. They had actors that have been known to be very decent. But this script was absolute garbage, the quips and humor was dull and stupid, and the protagonist of the film is stale and not very believable. At the end of this movie I found myself wondering what the point of this was. Don't get me wrong, I'm an action junkie and I enjoy intentionally stereotypical, over the top, comic bookish characters, but these were terrible. The only two assassins you get interested in are killed off in the blink of an eye leaving the stupidest ones left to finish the movie. One group of assassins is a clan of biker/redneck… people. Their clothing looks so new I cant take them seriously. They end up stealing a circus trailer so they can use the cannon to launch live clowns strapped with dynamite into a building. It almost sounds funny but it's shot horrendously. Which leads me to my next point. Don't use explosions if you can't do them right. These were the worst effects I've seen in a long time. There were unnecessary scenes where you could tell they used a green screen; many of them were used while the redneck clan was driving around. This was just all around disappointing. Which is a shame because the locations, lighting, and choreography for some of these shootouts were absolutely gorgeous! That is the only thing keeping me from giving this movie 1 star.

Rarely does an action movie, no matter how terrible, move me to write about it. It's an action movie -- it has guns and bad guys, so what could actually deserve the lowest possible rating, given that there are some truly terrible B-movies out there? It's a slap .. no, a defecation in the face of all action, gangster and/or shoot 'em up movie lovers.Awful direction, puerile script, tragic, talentless actors -- a veritable s**t-storm of OMFG. Your patience will be stretched to a nanometre waiting for something rewarding to occur. One or two lines from Vinnie Jones can not possibly rescue this flaming Hindenburg (and not in a good way) of a B-flick.This might have made a decent you-tube submission if it had been edited down to 15 minutes. The vast majority of it reminds me of the kind of movies my friends and I made when we were 10.Is there another way to say F*** S*** F***?

In Smokin' Aces II, various professional killers are offered 3 million to kill some wheelchair-bound midlevel FBI analyst by 3 am. The FBI finds out about the plot and mounts an operation to transport him and keep him safe in an underground bunker. For some reason this bunker is in a not so good neighborhood, under a Jazz club. The FBI stations agents in a motel across the street, 2 snipers on a roof, and an agent at the front door disguised as a panhandler. The owner of the club and trumpet player of the band is also an FBI agent.Going after the money are assorted brilliant killers- a hot Latin chick, a family of rednecks, a master of disguise and a meticulous Vinnie Jones character. They all converge on the club and massive firefights and explosions erupt. Every killer has his own strategy. Vinnie and the chick pretend to be patrons at the bar, the master of disguise already has taken on the persona of one of the FBI agents. And the rednecks show up later for the party with their own brand of violence.Meanwhile the agent in charge Baker with a team of females try to research who is behind this and why. He also talks to the potential victim at length to find out why he is being targeted. The victim, who is good at card tricks has no idea why he was chosen. But Baker's team finds out that the villain who has hired the killers is called Hal Leuco. He was involved somehow in something called Operation True Patriot which in turn had something to do with various attacks against the West as a response, blowback, for brutal operation perpetrated by the West in the Middle East.The resolution of all this will turn out to be not just interesting story-wise but also lots of fun to see. In particular the Tremor family is colorful, has some original ways of doing mayhem and we learn most about them as well. A bit, but not enough, is told about the other killers.One problem with the movie is the setting in the bunker at night. In that regard part I was better because it had bigger and better settings during the day, had more light and color. Stuff going on in bunkers for hours isn't visually all that interesting. Autumn Reeser is very watchable though.Overall, an action movie that's a lot of fun to see and with a smart story.

They tried, that much is apparent, but they weren't even close.I rented this movie with high expectations. I knew that it couldn't possibly be as good as the first and as usual, when I get my hopes up, I'm extremely disappointed. And I was.What a waste of film, time and talent. Even bringing back Maury Sterling to reprise his role as Lester Tremor (who somehow managed to survive being shot – I'm assuming due to all the metal he was wearing that maybe (?) deflected the bullets– and somehow much more docile than in the first S.A.,) the slick way of introducing all the lead characters (as in the first movie) and even the mentionings of Morris Mecklin and Buddy Israel – who also somehow survived a cocaine overdose and his life-giving plug being pulled – could save this joke of a movie.Even a re-appearance of another character (with a different name of course) from the first movie, didn't do anything to help it. I guess they thought people wouldn't notice bringing back more than one dead person? The characters in this sequel (including a return by Lazlo Soot and except for him) were shallow, pathetic and in the case of the emergence of a whole new Tremor clan (except for Maury Sterling who, as I mentioned, reprises his role of a much toned down, not so radical looking, Lester) were downright stupid.Rather than a plot of some tired, old dinosaur being targeted for death for some code he cracked, the sensible storyline would have been to make agent Messner (played in the first action-packed masterpiece, by Ryan Reynolds) the target, due to his actions at the end of the first movie. If Ryan refused to reprise his role (and who could blame him if he had any idea the sequel would be this bad?) then they could have gotten someone else, made up the new storyline to include him having to change his face (a la Primo Sparazza aka Freeman Heller from the first movie) to avoid being hunted/killed/imprisoned, etc but his real identity being leaked, thus…the next Smokin' Aces. You get the idea and believe me…anything would have been better than the abortion storyline that we were given.I've heard this was actually a prequel, rather than a sequel and if that's the case, then a LOT more needed to be done to it to ensure that the person watching understood that it was supposed to take place before the first one...something...anything to make it clearer that it wasn't a sequel.As it is...my review stands as is, because that's how the movie was presented.