3000 Miles to Graceland
  
reviewed by Doug
Schneider It’s hard to know where a big-budget film like this goes astray, but in
the end it doesn’t really matter, I guess -- the result on screen is all the same.
3000 Miles to Graceland purports to be something of
an Elvis homage flick -- at least that’s what you’d gather from the film’s
intriguing trailer. The two main characters are Murphy (Kevin Costner) and Michael (Kurt
Russell). They’re both career criminals who like to dress like Elvis Presley. Murphy,
we learn, does so because he actually believes he’s the illegitimate son of Elvis
Presley. I’m not so sure if they ever explained Michael’s rationale.
Nevertheless, it’s not all that important because the Elvis angle is what the film
uses as the premise for these guys to rob a casino in Vegas (and to get us gullible chumps
in the theater). After that, other than a few fleeting references to Presley, that aspect
of the story is essentially gone -- an unfortunate move because I think that a film about
a deranged guy who truly believes he’s Presley’s son could be quite interesting.
What’s left is a mean-spirited and crude "crimefest" that made so little
sense that I’m at a complete loss to explain it.
Demian Lichtenstein, the film’s director, from what I
can gather, is a first-timer whose previous credits are music videos. He should have
gotten his name taken off this mess since it’s going to ruin his chances to work
again. Worse off than him are the top-name actors whose images are stuck on the screen.
The two lucky ones are David Arquette and Christian Slater. They get killed off early and
are subsequently erased from our minds before too much damage is done to their
reputations. Russell and Costner don’t have that luck; in fact, I read somewhere that
they were each given a chance to produce a final "cut" of the film (when that
happens you know something has really gone wrong). Judging by the emphasis on
Costner’s obnoxious Murphy character, he won (or lost, depending on how you want to
look at it).
3000 Miles to Graceland would have received a *
rating -- our worst -- if I hadn’t found one redeeming quality in it. Casting Kurt
Russell as an Elvis impersonator was a stroke of genius. Russell’s wonderful
portrayal of Presley in John Carpenter’s 1979 made-for-TV movie Elvis was
highly memorable. A few times Russell conjures up a little bit of that old magic here, and
for that the rating gets bumped to *1/2. |
