Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball, recently released direct to video on Blu-ray and DVD, is a follow-up to the star-studded 2006 Smokin' Aces. In the original movie, a contract is placed on a Las Vegas showman who has decided to turn State's evidence, enticing a bevy of interesting and psychotic assassins to Reno to try and collect the paycheck. Though the premise was a little weak, the movie itself was mostly enjoyable, sporting an impressive cast such as Ryan Reynolds, Ray Liotta, Chris Pine, Ben Affleck and Jeremy Piven (to name a few). The blood-soaked conclusion of the first movie left few of the players alive, but wrapped up the story fairly satisfactorily. I was therefore a bit surprised to hear that a follow-up was in the works.

Calling Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball a sequel is about like saying Highlander 2 is a sequel to the cult classic Highlander (anyone who has seen the second offering will understand). There was very little in the Smokin' Aces 2 that had anything to do with the first movie. The only returning cast members were two of the assassins, both lesser-known actors. The events in the first movie are only referenced once, and then only cursorily. The premise this time around is as follows. A message is intercepted that places a $3,000,000 bounty on a mid-level FBI data analyst named Walter Weed (Tom Berenger). The contract is very specific about the date and time when the target must be eliminated. Doing their best to protect Walter, Agent Baker (Clayne Crawford) puts together a team of agents tasked solely with preventing the fulfillment of the contract. The team escorts Walter to an old FBI bunker, there intending to hole up until the deadline passes. Of course, word gets out to the assorted assassins on the prowl, and they quickly descend upon the locale. Chaos ensues, as the assassins fight each other and the FBI agents, each assassin wanting to collect the offered money. The resulting bloodbath comes complete with an extremely high body count, over-the-top gun fights and even exploding clowns.

The story in Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball is extremely predictable, falling back on so many Hollywood cliches that I lost count. The cast includes a few relatively well-known actors, including Vinnie Jones, Michael Parks and Ernie Hudson. Mr. Jones appears twice on the movie case, and that is about as much as he appears in the movie. Terming the remainder of the acting mediocre may be giving it too much credit. Clayne Crawford is woefully over-matched acting opposite veteran Tom Berenger (who is looking every bit of 60+ years old in this movie). The disjointed story and scripting doesn't help out much either. Of the entire movie, I most enjoyed the ending. That sounds bad to say, I know, but the very end of the movie was the only genuine surprise for me, a small piece of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy, movie-watching day.

Despite it being a fairly lackluster movie, the action-oriented nature of Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball lends itself well to the Blu-ray format. Shootouts, as implausible as they were, are crisp in detail, while the blood and gore special effects do not (often) suffer from being overly obvious, as is sometimes the case when watching straight-to-video movies in Hi-Def. The scenes featuring explosions, many times the Achilles heel of action movies on Blu-ray, were visually stunning, adding a little extra comedic charm to the exploding clowns and helping the viewer forget the woeful plot. There were a few times where explosions were super-imposed, but that was a film-making decision meant to evoke a particular response (there are several off-the-wall moments such as this throughout the movie). Sound effects are extremely important in a movie this action-packed, and thankfully, this is another area in which Smokin' Aces 2 helps balance out its many flaws. The movie is meant to be loud, and it is, with a myriad of different types of gunfire and, as mentioned before, the explosions. As visually appealing as the firefights and explosions were, they were equally pleasing to the ears. Smokin' Aces 2 may have suffered from bad acting and poor scripting, but the special effects and sound guys were spot-on. The Blu-ray offering of Smokin' Aces 2 also sports a good number of bonus features. There are several behind-the-scenes featurettes that describe set design, weapons, cast training and even details about the exploding clowns. There are also the standard commentary tracks, deleted/alternate scenes and a gag reel, which did have some amusing moments. I often criticize Blu-ray offerings heavily for not taking advantage of the extra space available for content, but this is one movie that does not fall into that mold. While I cannot in good conscious advocate running out and buying this movie (in any format), for those that are fans of the original or just enjoy a movie full of mindless and savage butchery, Smokin' Aces 2 might be worth the price of a rental.