Review of 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001) by Jessica G — 10 Dec 2007

It's a movie about Elvis impersonating criminals. There are lots of explosions and cool one-liners in the trailer. The cast is Kurt Russel, Kevin Costner, Christian Slater, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Kevin Pollack, and Ice T. In other words, you'd think the only thing that could screw it up is Costner. Well, not exactly.

Don't get me wrong--Costner goes way to over the top in several scenes--but he's not really the problem. The heist itself is the set-up, with the fallout being where the action of the movie happens. Sadly, the plot is at exactly the wrong level of complexity. There are lots of double crosses and secrets hinted at, but there aren't enough clues about what really happened to make them worthwhile. If the movie were either better explained or less randomly convoluted, it could have been great.

Still, it's worth checking out. In addition to the great cast (many of whom should have gotten a lot more screen time), you get lots of explosions, the hints of a nice origin story for the two main bad guys (which was appropriate to leave vague, in my opinion), all kinds of Elvises, more explosions, gunplay, and lots and lots of Courtney Cox flesh. Don't get too worked up over that though, it's mainly just flesh--apparently only David Arquette gets to see the good stuff. I'm sure that this teaches us a valuable lesson of some kind--nice guys don't always finish last, God has a sense of humor, I'm not exactly sure, but it has to mean something.