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3000 Miles to Graceland [Region 2] Review

Normally I do not watch anything this violent. Normally I avoid any movie with Kevin Costner in it. The first because I just do not care to see violence. I once got talked into going to the drive-in to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I spent the whole evening with the sun visor down on the passenger side of the car, trying the best I could to not listen. The second because normally with Kevin Costner it is just Kevin Costner walking through a role. I never seem to accept him as whatever character he is playing.

We were flipping through the channels on cable one night and came across this movie about half way through. I got hooked into watching it. Having not seen the beginning I went back another night to catch that part. I ended up watching the whole movie.

Basic story plot is about a band of Elvis impersonators that rob a casino. They then end up double crossing each other. That was just about a given.

Cybil Waingrow (Courtney Cox) is a very dysfunctional mom with a son, Jesse Waingrow (David Kaye) who is fast on his way to becoming a criminal. One scene has Cybil making gymnastic love to Michael Zane (Kurt Douglas). Jesse sneaks into the bedroom during the lovemaking and steals Michael's wallet.

The master mind of the heist is Murphy played by Kevin Costner. It was a very different role than I am used to seeing Kevin in. Murphy has almost no redeeming qualities. He kills just about everybody he encounters. What got me is that for the most part I forget it was Kevin Costner.

If there is a good guy in the movie it is Michael Zane played by Kurt Russell. Kurt Russell has a tendency to play these characters with about one or two emotional responses, generally a depressive individual with a flat affect. He does so here.

The movie moves fast. It is very violent in the beginning and very violent in the end. While most of the plot twists and turns were predictable they kept me involved.

Quigley is played by Thomas Haden Church of Wings fame. I just never really bought him as the Federal Marshall chasing these crooks.

The soundtrack was really good, and there were more than a few Elvis tunes scattered through out the film. I'm not a huge Elvis fan, but hey he is The King.

There were some pieces at the end that I did not put together the first time I watched the film. Thinking about the movie after the second viewing gave it a little different flavor. Nuff said, do not want to give that away.

I am still trying to put my finger on why I cannot stop thinking about this movie. It was well done. It was entertaining. Maybe it was all the dysfunctional characters. Maybe it was the soundtrack. But for some reason it sticks. I'm not going to watch it again tomorrow, but I could see me doing so a few months from now.

3000 Miles to Graceland [Region 2] Overview

Opening with metallic computer-generated scorpions battling in a scorching desert wasteland, 3000 Miles to Graceland announces itself as one helluva nasty movie. A comedic wallow in antiheroic violence, the movie vomits off the screen, as if director Demian Lichtenstein--obviously a veteran of music videos--had mainlined amphetamines before stepping behind his oh-so-busy camera. In a futile attempt to out-Woo John Woo, Lichtenstein goes to extremes to achieve a kind of absurd in-your-face exhilaration, and for additional thrills, the movie gives second-billing to Kevin Costner in the most vile role of his career. As leather-clad Elvis impersonator and Presley bastard child Thomas Murphy, Costner's like a black-sheep brother to Raising Arizona's biker from hell.

With four accomplices including a fellow Elvis worshipper named Michael (Kurt Russell), Murphy storms a Vegas casino for a .2 million robbery that turns into a haywire bloodbath. Partners are eliminated, double-crosses abound, and Michael connects with a trashy sexpot (Courteney Cox Arquette) whose preteen son (David Kaye) is a precocious criminal in training. Murphy's on their trail, FBI agents are on Murphy's, and gradually things get really nasty. We're supposed to laugh at the blackness of it all, and sometimes the ballsy humor scores a bull's-eye. The road-movie action accommodates several twists of plot, and while Russell's enjoying a semireprise of his performance in John Carpenter's Elvis, there's something perversely thrilling about Costner's deadpan ruthlessness. But really, how amoral can one movie be without wearing out its welcome? Frenetically depraved, 3000 Miles to Graceland is like exotic roadkill: morbidly fascinating until you get a whiff of its stench. --Jeff Shannon

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Jan 27, 2010 23:20:05

Tags : Deep Discount DVD

Labels: [Region, Graceland