n Smokin’ Aces, writer-director Joe Carnahan channels Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino and Tony Scott with his hip and immoral narrative of corruption and greed in Nevada’s high-rolling desert sun.

At the core of this live-action, high-body-count is Jeremy Piven (Entourage) as Buddy "Aces" Israel, a Las Vegas magician who is involved with the mob. But, in fear for his life, he decides to turn his wiseguy associates over to the feds, which means he’s now the target of a large number of killers. The mob commissions a million-dollar hit against him, and rumours of this draws a convention of world-class killers out of the woodwork. Israel is holed up in a Lake Tahoe penthouse when the feds get wind of the mob hit: a million bucks for anyone who whacks Israel and cuts out his heart. So, it’s up to two agents, Ray Liotta and Ryan Reynolds, to protect him from the various specialist assassins who are trying to kill him to collect the ransom.

Big-name players – Ben Affleck, Andy Garcia, Peter Berg –shuffle their way through their roles, but Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) clearly had fun with his character as a cross-dressing, middle-class mob attorney who wants a piece of the action. Even Wayne Newton himself gets a cameo. Then there's R&B star Alicia Keys - making her cinema debut – as a lesbian killer who dresses up as a prostitute to get closer to Aces. Not required to do any serious acting, she is merely sufficient. But her thighs and breasts? Brilliant!

But amid all the freakish and sadistic hit men - and women - congregating to Lake Tahoe for the $1 million prize to assassinate Israel, it's impossible to care about any of them. They're all cartoonish, two-dimensional villains - and that particularly extends to Israel himself, in a loathsome cloud of coked-up bravado paranoia.