Starring Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, and Andy Garcia. Rated 18A.

Smokin’ Aces is Takashi Miike meets Roger Avary inside a first-person shooter remake of The Warriors. An incendiary, raucous, wretchedly excessive fantasia of attitude and bullets, it constantly vies with itself to find whatever cinematic area lies above the term over the top to fill it with blood. It neither makes sense nor cares.

Joe Carnahan made his debut in mainstream cinema with his wondrously dark policier Narc before an endless detour into the preproduction of Mission: Impossible III, from which he was eventually jettisoned. Now the talented writer-director has roared back with what appears to be his idea of an action comedy.

The setting is Lake Tahoe’s fanciest penthouse apartment, currently home to one Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven), a top Vegas magician whose friendship with mobsters encouraged a wrong turn into genuine mobstering. His criminal ambitions having earned the enmity of the Nevada Mafia, Israel is forced to seek the protection of the FBI. The film jerks backward and forward around a frantic half-hour window in which two federal agents (Carnahan’s muse, Ray Liotta, and a surprisingly grim, hairy Ryan Reynolds) could conceivably retrieve Israel into custody before the wannabe capo is done in by a bunch of bounty hunters, ranging from a greasy bail bondsman (Ben Affleck) to sleek, high-tech assassins (including Alicia Keys) to a family of murderous subhumans straight out of Frank Miller’s Sin City.

There are too many killers, and Israel’s plight is wrapped within a tortuously complex frenzy of unnecessary plot, explicated at coke-rap volume by hyperarticulate, implausibly whimsical psychopaths. The script is such a mishmash of TV pilots that it’s hard to understand the inevitable twist ending. You wonder: since the (ultimate) baddies had Israel under control, why did they release him? Well, to effect the con game—on us, perhaps.

Without narrative coherence, we are left with situations and acting. These are hit-and-miss, as befits the spray-and-pray method of machine-gunning. Though Liotta gives a truly weird, mannered, queeny performance, we get affecting work from Keys, Reynolds, and Chris Pine. The best small role is inhabited by Nestor Carbonell as a mercenary who eases his victims into death with the professional empathy of a therapist. The destiny of Affleck’s character could be construed as witty commentary on wooden actors, while Piven is magnetic, even charming; this proves that the man is a real magician, given that Israel’s single purpose in every scene is to be repulsive, leering, and doomed. I think we’re supposed to cry at the end—Carnahan, forgetting that anyone who’s still on-side by that point, would view tragic denouements as sheer hilarity.