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Cool is tricky, for a lot of reasons, most of which have to do with how contradictory cool can be. Cool can be calculated, for instance. In fact, it almost always is. But it can never seem calculated, because the second it does — poof, an "un" drops in front of the "cool."

Universal Jeremy Piven stars in "Smokin' Aces."

One of the contradictory rules of cool in movies is that the harder a movie tries to be cool, the less it is. Which brings us to Smokin' Aces, a movie that tries very hard to be cool. Very, very hard, to a point that's so over-the-top, it smacks of that most dreaded word in the lexicon of cool — "desperation." And one thing that cool absolutely never, ever is, is desperate. That's the kryptonite of cool.

So, in a way, it's a measure of writer and director Joe Carnahan's achievement that there are scenes, exchanges, moments and images in the movie that still manage to be really cool. This is the latest entry in that post-Tarantino genre of filmmaking, the gangster film that splices cartoonishly gory violence and rat-a-tat dialogue. There's the Hollywood Squares-styled roster of big names — Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, Ryan Reynolds — and a twisty-turny plot that involves betrayals and counterbetrayals, double crosses and triple crosses.

But instead of smoothly clicking along like a pop-culture roller-coaster ride, you end up feeling like you need a scorecard to keep track of who's who and a blackboard to diagram the action. That is if you try to pay attention and follow along. This movie is meant to be watched the way a video game is played: Just go from scene to scene and start blasting the minute you walk through the door.

Hot from his role as superagent Ari Gold on Entourage, Jeremy Piven is the center of this movie as Buddy "Aces" Israel, a Vegas magician turned mobster who, for reasons the movie spends its first 15 minutes explaining, has a contract put out on him by a dying mob boss. The boss offers a million dollars to anyone who kills Buddy and brings him his heart. (This 21st-century take on Sam Peckinpah's cult classic, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, could have rightly been titled Bring Me the Heart of Buddy Israel.) The offer has "every hit man in the free world" heading to Lake Tahoe, where Buddy is holed up in a hotel's penthouse waiting for a deal with the government to be worked out so he can turn snitch and go into hiding.

Subplots are stacked upon subplots as we are introduced to rival assassins, each with his or her own colorful back story. Most entertaining are Georgia and Sharice (Alicia Keys and Taraji P. Henson), two beautiful, tough-talking killers who have this whole sister-lover thing going on and speak in torrents of radical-feminist sound bites. Most improbable are the Tremor brothers, a trio of meth-fueled neo-Nazi punks who throw everyone they meet into a meat grinder, though they inspire one of the film's best lines when another hit man quips, "They read Mein Kampf like Mother Goose."

Jaimie Trueblood High stakes meet lowlifes in "Smokin' Aces," which stars (from left) Peter Berg, Ben Affleck and Martin Henderson.

There's also the superbad guy who chewed off his own fingertips to prevent ever leaving prints, and the master-of-disguise killer and this mysterious figure known only as Keyser Soze, I mean, "the Swede."

Then you have all the various federal agents with their deeply felt antagonisms or attachments. Amid all this Keystone Kops-in-a-blender mayhem, Smokin' Aces wants you to think that what the story is all about is deep, resonant human emotions.

Universal Alicia Keys stars in "Smokin' Aces."

Hey, the heart everybody wants to dig out of the chest of Buddy is a symbol, man. When the movie isn't acting like a shoot-'em-up video game, it's aping anime, showering the viewer with hyperkinetic images and outrageous action while anchoring (or in this case, trying to) all the fantastical spectacle in some real universal feelings. Mr. Tarantino did the same in Kill Bill with all that splatter rooted in a mother's love for her lost little girl. And Mr. Carnahan tries to do it here with, um, Mr. Reynolds' FBI agent's love and admiration for his boss agent, Mr. Liotta

At least I think so, but I can't be sure since the final tragic scene of this high-tech opera, in which Andy Garcia explains everything to Ryan Reynolds, makes no sense. The tricky thing about being tricky is that all of the intersecting complexities have to climax in a really simple explanation. Think of that oh-my-god scene in The Usual Suspects in which you figure it out while watching Chazz Palminteri's character figure it out just as, out on the sidewalk, Kevin Spacey's supposedly bad foot snaps into place. It all clicks with barely a word spoken. But here, it seems as if people never stop explaining.

"Make it make sense," pleads Mr. Reynolds to Mr. Garcia in the final scene. But he can't. And by then, you won't care.Smokin' Aces