Last week I put up my review of A Clockwork Orange – one of the most appropriately violent movies I had ever seen. It is mere coincidence then that the second most appropriately violent movie, Smokin’ Aces, gets its review now. Written and Directed by Joe Carnahan, Smokin’ Aces is the complicated story of a second-rate magician with a large bounty apparently on his head for selling out his crime lord friends to the FBI. The cast is great, Jeremy Piven, Andy Garcia and the brutally sexy Alicia Keys – who by the way has some great legs (I did not know this). It is an entertaining movie you will think in some respects was directed by Quenten Tarantino – but wasn’t. It falls just short of Resservoir Dogs and Fight club in terms of script and direction, but fits perfectly next to those movies on your shelf, if organized by Genre and then quality. Maybe you go alpha, I don’t know, my system is kind of random … like this post.

As for the HD quality – It looks like this film was made for an HD picture. The shots were great and when necessary, large in scope. Jeremy Piven’s character gets put through the wringer in this movie and the close-ups of his face truly revealed how stressed this character was. Adding to the effect was the detail that HD allows. I cannot see this deatil in an SD format. Similarly, Alicia Keys’ thighs looked really good in HD – rawr. Ultimately, Being a bloodbath, this movie needed the details that a high resolution picture allows. At certain times my wife had to turn her head away from the carnage. I have never seen her do that before, and I doubt an SD picture would have the same effect. Ultimately, this was one of the best non-effects based HD DVDs I think I have ever seen. That said, as I watch more and more HD DVD, I find myself looking for effects based movies. Regardless, this picture is great – thank goodness its a Universal HD DVD.

As for the audio: spot on as our friends across the pond would say. Seriously spot on. Crime dramas can be very effectively mastered in HD audio, like Smokin’ Aces and Miami Vice. The audio mix added to the environment and was very well mastered.

Amazingly, this HD DVD had a very cool menu animation and employed U-Control. U-Control is Universal’s use of HDi to display extra film information in a Picture-in-Picture format – a feature that is lacking on Pre-Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players. So far the implementation has been spotty. I can, however, attest that the U-Control feature in this HD DVD is awesome, providing information otherwise found by using IMDB and the ‘internets’. After experiencing this U-control HD DVD, I re-watched Miami Vice paying special attention to the U-Control features. It really is a new movie experience; one exclusive to HD DVD.

What keeps this out of my 5 favorites, is the overall movie expereience. The point of the 5 favorites is to suggest the first 5 movies a newbie should buy and 5 movies that you can use to show off HD DVD’s features. I am secure with my current list. Regardless of how awesome the HD DVD features were, I still think I would choose the 5 I have listed to show off the format. That said, I am bumping Apollo 13 from the honorable mention list and adding this flick. Enjoy.

ILHDDVD Rating: 4/5 (Good HD DVD + Cool extras (lack of wow) = 4; Honorable Mention)
Video/Image: 5/5 (One of the best looking non-effects based HD DVDs)
Audio: 4/5 (WTYM)
 recommended

Honorable Mention

Did you see this HD DVD? Rankit: (4 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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