Review of Elvis (1979) by Mark F — 03 Aug 2014

I've never been a huge Elvis Presley fan. He has a few songs that I dig, some I don't, a bunch of movies I haven't seen (I've seen some, but the only one I truly watched was "Jailhouse Rock", which was decent) and I don't really have anything against him.

He is an American Icon though, and I am just a little bit interested in him. This bio-pic is pretty decent, mostly propelled by the great performance by Kurt Russell, who really nails the part. The film was directed by John Carpenter, who chose to do something very different following completion of "Halloween".

The choice was a smart one, to try his hand at something new and expand his horizons. It also was his first team-up with Russell, and the two would continue to collaborate on several entertaining movies over the next decade.

The film has inaccuracies like most bio-pics, and at times it seemed to rush through several pivotal events despite it's length of almost 3 hours. Another issue would be that several characters aren't really explained or developed, and only make sense if you know the story of Elvis already.

Elvis is the only character truly developed, which makes sense, but he is, at times, portrayed a little too pure and his demons aren't really explored (and the film ends before his life took it's downturn that lead to his death).

Still it is a decent bio-pic with a tremendous performance from Kurt Russell.