Checking in on the entertainment spectrum somewhere between a cockfight and a really fine tractor pull, "Smokin' Aces" offers scabrous, bloody and bloody-minded fun for reptiles and reptile wannabes.

Seek in its confines neither wisdom nor insight, beauty nor refinement, grace nor poetry, but rather enjoy a movie that most resembles a guided tour of the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show, where the year's new-model toys are introduced. Although the stars include Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Ben Affleck and Ryan Reynolds, the truly commanding performance is handed in by a mean-as-sin Barrett .50 semiautomatic sniper rifle.

The setup is primitive but effective. In a penthouse suite in Lake Tahoe, a somewhat smarmy guy named Buddy "Aces" Israel (Piven) has gone to ground while his lawyer is in D.C. huckstering him off to the highest bidder in the law enforcement casino. Buddy knows way too much about not only where the bodies are buried but who turned them into bodies in the first place. Mob bosses realize they have to get him fast, before he clinches the deal and is hustled off to protective custody. Thus every high-end hit man in the world is contacted and offered a million bucks if he or she or they can be the one to snuff Buddy; it's kind of like a hit man's Olympics.

Isn't this grown-up? In a word, no, and that's what's so much fun about it.

-- Stephen Hunter (Jan. 26, 2007)

Contains violence, gore and profanity.