3000 Miles to Graceland

Elvis, Whores, and Vegas.

Take a bunch of washed up losers, throw em in Elvis jumpsuits, give em big guns, and you've got a movie, or so someone thought. The idea in and of itself is a cool one. Elvis impersonators gone bad rampage across Las Vegas... I mean come on, you gotta like that. But like so many other great movie ideas, this one fell flat on its face next to the rotting corpses of Costner and Russells' carreers.

Elvis was a swinger, a mover a shaker, and film about Elvi robbing casinos is cool indeed, but despite indications to the contrary, this is not what this film is about. By the end of the first half hour, most of the Elvi have killed each other, leaving only the 2 most hardened and most Elvis like to duke it out for supremacy. Sadly, after the first 30 minutes, the whole Elvis thing is forgotten; cast aside in favor of a mediocre madman serial killer, Vs good hearted criminal, story. It is at this moment that 3000 Miles to Graceland digs its own grave and promptly throws itself in amid a cacophony of cheap hussies, heartless gangsters, and retreaded dialogue.

Cold hearted criminals become family men, Elvis wannabe's end up dead, and Kevin Costner acts his heart out in a villainous performance that comes off shockingly well considering Costner's past propensity for playing super clean goody too-shoes. But its all for naught in a truly emotionally empty film. Its all about guns, bucks, and whores flung in a world where reality is what you make it and people live for nothing at all.

Why do these men do what they do? What drives these characters? Why should we care? 3000 Miles to Graceland never tells us, it just blows up in our faces and trickles out of your head like an empty, polluted river of desolate filth.

3000 Miles to Graceland could have been cool, could have been weird, could have been wild, could have been fun. But the very hook which promised so much greatness (bank robbing Elvi) is merely a brief aside in a film about the empty dark world of a psychopathic killer and a good hearted, murderous criminal. This should have been a dark comedy, filled with wondrously insane and disturbing moments of Elvis inspired mayhem, instead its some sort of sinister melodrama which doesn't know it isn't funny.