3,000 Miles to Graceland | | Cast : | Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner | | Director : | Demian Lichtenstein | | Studio : | Warner Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | February 23, 2001 | | DVD Released Date : | June 03, 2003 | | Language : | Unknown (Dubbed), English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 21, 2005 | | Summary | Russell & Costner's Excellent Adventure | Content
 | I walked into this movie thinking I was going to see a stupid action movie about a group of guys dressing up as Elvis impersonators and pulling off a heist in a casino. I was about 25% right in my assumptions, but you know what happens when you assume...
It WAS stupid, and it technically is an action movie, but it was neither entertaining nor really about the heist itself. Most of the credited cast like David Arquette and Christian Slater are sorely underused and really lacking a purpose of even being in the film at all. The heist is over and the majority of the cast killed off barely within the first act of the movie, and the rest of it is about how everyone who's not dead fights over the money.
This is an utter disaster. I expected so much more out of such a bizarre and fairly original initial concept. This could have been so much better if they had stuck with the original idea of pulling off the actual heist and having it go seriously wrong, making it kinda like a combination of 'Ocean's Eleven' and 'Die Hard'. ...Too bad... |
| Rating | | | Date | May 06, 2005 | | Summary | A steaming pile of dung | Content
| I thought to myself, I'm going to ignore the critics on this one. I like Kevin Costner, I like Kurt Russell and guys robbing a casino dressed like Elvis sounds fun. Well, sometimes the critics get it right. This movie is, in a word, awful. Kurt Russell tries his best with his part, but he can only do so much with the horrible script he's given. Costner's part is written even worse and he chews scenery like he's channeling Pacino. There are bad edits, scenes that make no sense and have nothing to do with the plot (what plot there is), and violence just for the sake of violence, sex for the sake of sex and nothing has anything to do with storytelling. I don't know who the writer/director is but someone stop him before he makes another film. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 12, 2005 | | Summary | 0K Miles to Boredom | Content
| I'll admit it. I love to go to see big, dumb action films. On certain weekends, Joel Silver calls me to the local multiplex to watch his latest offering. I go to big, dumb action films for the stunts, for the action, for the testosterone. "3000 Miles To Graceland", the new film starring Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell, is not produced by Joel Silver, but I hoped it would provide me with a Joel Silver fix.
Michael Zane (Kurt Russell) has just been released from prison. He drives into a fleabag motel on the outskirts of the desert and immediately hooks up with a single mom, Cybil (Courteney Cox), living in the motel. Soon, Thomas J. Murphy (Kevin Costner) drives up with three other thugs. Zane and Murphy shared a cell together. They are planning to rob the Riviera Casino in Las Vegas. The hook? The Riviera is hosting an Elvis Impersonator Convention and they will all dress like Elvis and use that as a cover. Murphy brings Hanson (Christian Slater), Gus (David Arquette) and Franklin (Bokeem Woodbine) along for the ride. The heist proceeds and they run into complications.
There are a lot of problems with "3000 Miles", so many that the movie is ultimately a disaster. Kurt Russell is actually a very underrated actor. He has made some solid, very satisfying films in the last few years. "Breakdown" was a very underrated suspense film. However, I don't think "3000 Miles" will be a film that he wants to remember for very long. He tries, very hard, to eke out some moments of drama and tenderness as he tries to develop a relationship with Cybil and her son. Russell is a fine actor, but the writing is not there. These scenes feel almost as though they were tacked on as an afterthought.
Kevin Costner plays a murderous psychopath, the first time he has attempted a character such as this since "A Perfect World", directed by Clint Eastwood. Considering the success he has had playing this type of character, he should probably stick to playing heroes. Wait! Considering the success he has had playing heroes lately, perhaps he should stick to... something that doesn't involve acting. Costner owes me for the three plus hours I spent watching "Wyatt Earp", for the two plus hours I spent watching "Waterworld".
Christian Slater, Bokeem Woodbine, David Arquette, Howie Long, Jon Lovitz and Ice-T all pop up for short cameos. The relative stardom of each of these people can be debated, but the purpose of any of these people doing what amounts to a cameo should be that they create a memorable character. Sorry, doesn't happen.
The casino heist is actually very early in the film and rather quick. No time is spent detailing their preparations and when the heist begins it almost appears as though no planning went into the execution. The heist is also very bloody. I have no problem with violence in films, as long as it makes sense in the course of the story. Each of the participants waves their guns around, shooting anything and everything in sight, glass and mirrors erupting. They are clearly not aiming at anything and therefore demolish the area around them. "3000 Miles" has gratuitous violence, which I do have a problem with.
After the heist, the film eventually becomes a road picture. Again, not much makes sense during this part of the film.
The director, a first-timer, cross cuts the casino heist with endless shots of showgirls and Elvis impersonators. This is, I think, supposed to be cutting edge. This was cutting edge in the 60s, when the real Elvis was making horrible excuses for films simply so he could generate new hit songs.
Ultimately, everything in the film equals nothing and I doubt that you would enjoy catching this film on cable, for free, in the middle of the night, when nothing else is on.
|
| Rating | | | Date | March 29, 2005 | | Summary | Don't mess with his Blue Suede Shoes | Content
| Let's break this down and serve it up faster and hotter than one of those fried banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches The King himself loved so much: "3000 Miles to Graceland" is one of the fastest, tightest, hottest, gun-slingingest, ammo-pumpingest, dead sexy, little bloodbaths I've ever had the good fortune to come across.
One blue suede shoe over two hours long, director Demian Lichtenstein has created a white-hot little shot of pure cinematic adrenaline, cooked up with some of the tightest editing I've ever seen, brutal gun battles in which every bullet-riddled sequence keeps trying to up the ante on its predecessor, a Las Vegas casino (the Riviera) full of Elvis impersonators of every size, shape and sort, sexy Vegas showgirls with abs of steel, toe-tapping techno and rockabilly tunes to accompany the grand carnage, more double-crosses and twists than a West Virginia logging road, and high-voltage double barrelled starpower featuring Kevin Costner in his best role ever (as a villain!), Kurt Russell, Courteney Cox, Christian Slater, and David Arquette.
Besides, how can you fault a movie that takes the average action film's gunfight quotient, triples it, and delivers the gory goods in spades---*and* begins and ends with a techno scorpion deathmatch *and* a bloodbath? Answer: You can't.
The plot is action-movie simplicity itself: Russell plays drifter and con-man Michael Zane, who hooks up with fellow footpad Thomas Murphy (played to the rhinestone-plated hilt by Kevin Costner) and two other villains (Christian Slater and Bokeem Woodbine) to pull off a 3.2 million dollar heist at the Las Vegas Riviera casino during the International Elvis Impersonator Night.
Director Lichtenstein is my kind of director, too: he doesn't waste time with lots of exposition, but digs right into the main attraction and shoots our jumpsuit-costumed perfectly-coiffed Memphis drawling robbers into the casino, and "3000 Miles" starts out with one of the slickest, lead-pumpingest gunfights this side of Blue Hawaii, to say nothing of the surreal sequence with the helicopter set to the toe-tapping goodness of Elvis's "Such a Night".
Faster than you can fry up a Montecristo sandwich the casino gets robbed, crosses get doubled, conspirators get buried in shallow graves, Russell falls in with the sultry Cox and her son, the Feds get called in, and nothing but trouble looms for everyone involved. The editing here is tight, the gun-battles intense, the Elvis riffs yummy, the dancing girls delicious, and the climactic stand-off is roaring good fun, pitting Kevin Costner's drawling and well-armed lunatic against a small army of SWAT police.
Lichtenstein delivers the goods with tight editing and breathless action, making the finished product look like it cost three times as much as it did. The acting here is also all first rate, from Cox and Costner (who should play more villains), to Russell (who exudes pure unadulterated cool), to Slater, Woodbine, and a small squad of veteran character actors---including Jon Lovitz as a money launderer, Howie Long in yet *another* role as a hip thug, Ice-T as the hitman's hitman, and even Lorraine Cote, who has made a career playing an old lady surgically attached to a Las Vegas one-armed bandit.
If you're looking for deep and introspective, look elsewhere---but if you're looking for a rip-roaring, take-no-prisoners little hound dog of a movie that the King himself would have enjoyed, "3000 Miles to Graceland" is three thousand miles of pure delight.
JSG |
| Rating | | | Date | January 26, 2005 | | Summary | Good performances, poor direction | Content
| The first 1/3 of this movie was really good. Some great action scenes, great chemistry between all involved..... and then all of a sudden, most of the cast is killed off and what we are left with is; Kurt Russell and a child actor who really never work, a relationship with Coutney Cox that was never believable, hot potatoe with a bag of money, and Kevin Costner in a Wombat suit. How is that for a mental image?
This could have been a great movie if they would have done the following; take more time with the build up to the actual "heist". Since that was the highlight, to have it happen within the first 20 mintues leaves the rest of the movie gasping for air. By doing this it would have given more screen time to "the crew of Elvis's" plus given the audience more of a shock when Costner goes renegade.
All the pieces were in place for this movie, it could have been great but as it stands, it's just another in a long line of almosts. |
|
Picture 01 (20)
