Killers of all stripes The first film, directed by Joe Carnahan, turned out to be a great example of an action movie, in which the script is super-successful – moderately detailed, full of characters, each of which can be revealed due to their importance with a solid amount of humor, including black and of course with a chic selection of the cast, where Ben Affleck himself found a place only as a secondary hero!
The second part of the film, or rather the prequel to Carnahan’s “Trump Aces”, can not boast of such an arsenal of advantages, but it also has something to pay attention to.
The film tells about an elderly FBI agent Walter Weed (Tom Berenger), for whom an unknown person opens an order. Weed is due to be killed no later than 3 a.m. on April 19, the contractor will receive 3 million greens. A special group of the FBI hides Weed in a secret bunker, where you can get only by detonating a nuclear bomb above the bunker (and even then this idea will seem doubtful), where assassins of various stripes will soon arrive. And then the question arises: who will get to Weed first and, most importantly, who opened the order for an agent who never in his career had access to important affairs and people?
It is worth saying right away that if you expect from this film the same as from the first “Trump Aces”, you will be disappointed. "The Death Ball" is more like a thrash action movie and, although a prequel to the Carnahan project, has little to do with it. Except that Tommy Flanagan again returned to the role of a killer with a lot of faces named Lazlo Soot, and Maury Sterling again played one of the Tremor brothers. And plus in the course of the film a couple of times sound the names of Buddy Israel and Primo Sparazzi – the characters of the first part. Otherwise, "Trump Aces 2" is an independent action movie, not even claiming the laurels of a high-quality and intelligent action movie, as was the case with the first film.
Christopher Michael Holley plays an undercover FBI agent who runs a bar, in one scene he talks about going on another mission again. In Carnahan's "Trump Aces," he plays one of Buddy Israel's people named Benny, and here it is not clear whether this was another undercover assignment for Holly's character, or in two parts of "Trump Aces," he played two different people.
Indeed, Smokin Aces turned out to be very entertaining, and the viewer who watched it for the first time might have thought that Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie were at least producers or writers of the film. There were chic dialogues, and excellent scenes of shootouts with cool shots and subtle work of the operator, and a bright picture in itself, and of course memorable heroes. In the case of the second film, you can single out all the bright characters and, first of all, mercenaries who were picked up like suits from a deck of cards - for every taste and color (personally, I was only constantly pissed off by one of the members of the Tremor family - a fat moron). Each of them has its own style and manner of doing business, which makes it different from every next killer. Not bad in the “Death Ball” and set a shootout in the bar and bunker, where the character of Tom Berenger was hiding, but in terms of the rest of the film was not so good.
Special effects are at the level of a novice user of Pinnacle Studio b Adobe Premier and this is especially clear in the scene when the Tremor family visits a wandering circus and arranges a couple of explosions there. The plot of the film is not that sucked out of a finger, but just in itself is quite superficial and sometimes illogical, and in the end it begins to resemble the story of “Chatter” from Bryan Singer’s “Ordinary Suspects” (look to the end and see what it is about). Dialogues are quite simple and even banal, jokes are sometimes funny, executed almost in the style of the first part.
Among the famous actors are Tom Berenger, at the time of the release of this picture, who has already come down from the top of his fame, Ernie Hudson (and even then his role is limited to a few minutes at the end), Vinnie Jones, Tommy Flanaga da Keegan Connor Tracy, whom I personally remember on the second part of Destination, and even then only because it is cut there into three pieces! If you compare with the first film, then of course the cast of this part in the sweep is not suitable for the composition of that picture! Jokingly, one film involved Ray Liotta, Common, Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, Matthew Fox, Ryan Reynolds, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Piven, Joel Edgerton, Nestor Carbonnell, Martin Henderson, Kevin Duran and Peter Berg (now actively shooting films with Mark Wahlberg).
One way or another, “Trump Aces 2: Death Ball” may well come off for viewing, but only if you have nothing more to watch and you are ready for the fact that this film will not be like the first (especially if the first you went 100%).
But look at you. I do not impose my opinion on anyone.
Enjoy your visit.
6 out of 10