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The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, is dead. At least at the movies
thanks to the terrible new action flick 3000 Miles To Graceland. An
excessive, violent, loud and stupid beyond belief movie that will appeal
only to those fresh from a lobotomy, 3000 Miles To Graceland is the
Battlefield Earth of the action genre.
The plot centers around two ex-convicts, the vicious Murphy (Kevin Costner)
and the somewhat more benign Michael (Kurt Russell). Along with a gang of
three other guys (Christian Slater, Bokeem Woodbine and David Arquette), the
two plan on robbing a Las Vegas casino during an Elvis Impersonator
convention. Dressed as Elvis Impersonators, they carry off the robbery, but
not before piling up about several hundred (and one Elvis Impersonator
midget!) cops and innocent people during their escape.
Afterwards, there is
some arguing about dividing up the loot, which is just the thing Murphy
needs to knock everyone off and keep the loot for him. But, Michael
survives, and with a mother (Courtney Cox-Arquette) and her son
(David Kaye) in tow, Michael races off up north to launder the money before
Murphy can catch up to him.
The above paragraph sums up both the plot of the movie, and the film's first
thirty minutes. For the next one hour and forty minutes, we get a loud,
long, ridiculous chase movie that is about as exciting as two people chasing
each other cross country on mopeds. Director Demian Lichtenstein, another
music video moron turned "filmmaker", thinks that excess is intensity.
Wrong. Demian, turning up the volume, editing each scene so they don't last
longer than five to ten seconds and using every annoying camera trick in the
book doesn't make you the heir to the Oliver Stone/Quentin Tarantino throne.
It just shows that you have no idea how to make a movie of your own, just
copy others and slap your name on it.
As for Lichtenstein's screenwriting talents (he co-wrote the film with
Richard Recco), they suck just as much. Every character is odious and
clichéd (I kept hoping that Murphy would knock off that obnoxious kid, just
so we wouldn't have to listen to him anymore), the situations are
ridiculous, the Elvis concept is woefully underused, it's incredibly
misogynistic and the humour to offset the rampant violence (which makes
Hannibal tame in comparison) is about as funny as a tax audit. If these are
the type of screenplays making it to the big screen these days, I say bring
on the strike!
I wish I could say that I felt sorry for Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner, but
after all, they did get paid to make this. No one forced them to star in it
(As a matter of fact, each of them did take their best shot at editing this
movie. God only knows whose cut this is.). Russell, who made for a damn fine
King Of Rock and Roll in the 1979 television film Elvis, looks lost here.
Costner hams it up, but to no avail (one positive note: he didn't attempt an
accent here.). Courtney Cox, completely miscast here, looked like she
discovered eating since her last screen appearance (in last year's Scream
3). As for Slater, Arquette and Woodbine (as the other members of the
robbery gang), their screen time is so limited that if you blink, you might
miss them.
3000 Miles To Graceland is a film that should have been quietly put on the
shelf at Warner Brothers and left to collect dust. This is the type of crap
that usually comes out the week after Labor Day when no one goes to the
movies, so the loud thud it would create wouldn't be noticed too much. Elvis
has left the building, and he took any chances this piece of garbage had of
being viewable with him.
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REVIEW: 
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