HITTING THE MARK SPILLING HIS GUTS TAKES ON A WHOLE NEW MEANING FOR THIS MOB INFORMER.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Joe Carnahan doesn't want to explain the metaphorical meaning of his bloody, convoluted crime puzzler ``Smokin' Aces.''

But after too many reviews declared the movie a Tarantino knockoff, the writer-director feels it's necessary to point out that -- tricky plot, crazy characters, extra-articulate/profane dialogue and over-the-top violence notwithstanding -- ``Aces'' is, at heart, a comment on current events.

``This sounds like a far-flung allegory, yet it wasn't to me, at least,'' Carnahan says.

The 37-year-old filmmaker, whose first two crime movies, ``Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane'' and ``Narc,'' received a good deal of critical acclaim, says that when he was writing ``Smokin' Aces,'' American forces were in Iraq searching for weapons of mass destruction, and he was thinking we were ``being b.s.'d a little bit.''

``So when I look at `Smokin' Aces,' I see the entire film as misinformation. The twist at the end is completely immaterial to me. I just loved the idea that misinformation could lead to this horribly chaotic violence.''

Carnahan's theory makes sense once you hear it. You don't necessarily see it while watching the movie, though. You're too busy trying to keep up with its ever-mutating plot.

The basic story goes something like this: ``Entourage's'' Jeremy Piven plays Buddy ``Aces'' Israel, a Vegas magician whose efforts to become a wiseguy have gotten him in deep trouble with the mob. Holed up none too secretly in the penthouse of a Lake Tahoe hotel, he's waiting to cut a deal with the feds while assorted assassins converge on his hideaway, all eager to claim the $1 million bounty a Mafia chieftain is rumored to be offering.

Ryan Reynolds and Ray Liotta play the FBI agents charged with protecting Aces. Andy Garcia is their boss, who knows more than he's telling them. Taraji Henson and, in her acting debut, music superstar Alicia Keys play a pair of hit women, Ben Affleck and Martin Henderson are scruffy skip-tracers. And there's a trio of meth-fueled neo-Nazi brothers, a guy who wears ``Mission: Impossible''-style lifelike masks, bodyguards who can and cannot be trusted, and a karate kid who really shouldn't be off his Ritalin.

The plot really thickens

But Carnahan insists that this circus of Circus Maximus mayhem has solid underlying ideas.

``I certainly didn't go through this as an empty-headed exercise in violence and confusion and deliberately troubling the viewer with trying to stay ahead of all this stuff,'' the filmmaker says.

Many in the ensemble cast agree that a strong creative vision holds this jigsaw-plotted chain-saw massacre together.

``Some of the words were like poetry to me,'' says Grammy-winning hip-hop artist Common, another music star who makes his acting debut in ``Smokin'.'' ``I was really attracted to the writing of the script. And when I met Joe, he had that passion that I love to work with in artists. And my character was somebody that had some depth to him.''

Then again, others admit that filming ``Smokin's'' elaborately choreographed shootouts definitely distracted them from any loftier aesthetic goals.

``It's weird when you're walking by people who are wearing outfits made entirely of blood,'' Ryan Reynolds notes. ``You get used to it pretty quickly -- your eyes get accustomed to it. But your nervous system, after a movie like this, is sort of shot for a couple of weeks. It's incredibly stressful being around gunfire and violence like that.''

From high-powered ballistics to power tools, simple-but-effective spring-loaded spikes to common-but-sharp-edged playing cards, ``Smokin' '' indeed seems to utilize as many implements of pain as a ``Saw'' sequel. But Carnahan believes that there's a big difference between the way he and more exploitative filmmakers portray brutality.

``You don't see much, really,'' he insists. ``It's suggestive as hell, but you don't see the spike going into the guy, or the other guy sit on the chain saw. Your imagination is creating a fairly horrendous image, and that's kind of the goal. Even when the guys get shot in the hallway, it's sudden and from a distance. I've no desire to go up close and examine gore, do one of these torture movies that are very in vogue. I don't like violence for violence's sake, devoid of any context. But those kind of movies do really well; people want to see that stuff, and that's certainly part of, as a society, something we're dealing with.''

Cruise controlled

Raised in Sacramento, Carnahan studied film and art history there and in San Francisco. He became something of a Hollywood flavor-of-the-month after Tom Cruise, enamored of the independently produced ``Narc,'' convinced Paramount Pictures to release it. Carnahan then spent more than a year developing ``Mission: Impossible 3'' with Cruise (he concedes that ``Smokin's'' mask guy is probably a spillover from that process).

Carnahan wanted the sequel to address current events in Africa and the topic of private armies, but when it became clear that Cruise preferred a less-relevant story line, the producer-star and director amicably parted ways. Perhaps just as well, considering the eventual ``M:I:3's'' disappointing box-office performance and Cruise's subsequent ejection from Paramount.

Carnahan figures that after that experience, it was inevitable that he might have gone a bit overboard with ``Smokin' Aces.''

``I spent 15 months on `Mission: Impossible 3,' and at the end of that process I felt straitjacketed,'' he admits. ``And I was as culpable in that as anybody else; I let myself stay in a process that I knew wasn't going to be creatively fulfilling far longer than I should have.

``But your reaction to anything when you become kind of unbound is just to move and stretch and have this free range of movement where you're not all cinched up. So I really wanted to throw everything at `Smokin' Aces' in this kind of collage.

``Will it work? I had no idea if it would work. But I knew it was interesting and worth the effort -- rather that than play it right down the middle.''

And if that approach reminds critics of a certain video-store clerk-turned-influential auteur, well, maybe that was inevitable, too. But it wasn't intentional.

``What idiot trying to make movies nowadays would ever consciously try to ape a Tarantino movie?'' Carnahan asks. ``Unless you just want to be derided. It's counterproductive, counterintuitive -- it's just stupid.

``For better or for worse, the Quentin Tarantino thing has completely hijacked this particular genre. I can't blame him, he's just ... brilliant -- and infuriating. It makes me want to say that I'll never wander into this territory, that guy's the deed holder. I will never, in no way, become an apologist for the film -- but I learned my lesson.''

Looks like it. Carnahan's next project is a remake of the (bloodless) '60s kidnapping drama ``Bunny Lake Is Missing.'' But he's still pushing for people to see ``Smokin' Aces'' for what he says it is. Even if he has to wince while saying it.

``Honest to God, the last thing you want to do is go, `Well, this is about Iraq' and `This is an allegory,' '' Carnahan confesses. ``But when it feels like it's just going to be dismissed out of hand, it's worth it to give it some frame of context. Better just to put that seed there and see if it does germinate. I feel some kind of skeezy even telling you; ultimately, it's a small tail wagging a gigantic dog.

But that's it.''

Bob Strauss [phone]

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Landscape of violence

`Smoking' Aces' is a bloodbath, but filmmaker Joe Carnahan says he's not imitating Tarantino

(2) Ryan Reynolds and Ray Liotta are FBI agents assigned to get to a mob informer before assassins do in ``Smokin' Aces.''