I couldn’t tell what this movie was about after seeing the previews except that it was another one with Elvis impersonators. Then I read something about a gang of guys robbing a casino and that says it all. The gang of guys is lead by Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell, a couple of tough guy ex-cons who team up with four other goofballs. Dressed up as Elvis during a Las Vegas “Elvis impersonators” promotion, they figure that provides them with the right disguises to carry out their heist. It’s about the only thing they planned right. As you can figure with these movies, what can go wrong, does go wrong. Funny, that’s Murphy’s Law and the character played by Costner is named Murphy.

It becomes pretty clear early on that there are two main “bad guys” here. But the twist is Costner is the “bad bad guy” and Russell is the “good bad guy”. What a strange start to this movie. Russell, playing a guy named Michael, stops at a rundown motel on his way to Vegas. There he meets up with a woman named Cybil (with a “C”, that’s actually a gag in the movie, pretty lame, huh?) played by Courteney Cox. She’s got a kid who’s about eight or nine years old. Within seconds, it seems, Michael and Cybil are having sex and the kid is stealing stuff from Michael. Then it happens again- sex and stealing and I’m sitting there thinking how long is this whole movie anyway because I can think of a few edits I’d make.

What’s tougher that that start is figuring out the purpose of Cybil in this movie. I couldn’t figure out if she just stayed at the motel or just managed it or what her story was. Why does that matter? Well, as things go along, Cybil makes even less and less sense. She’s supposed to be the “girl in the middle” and you’re supposed to try and figure out what she’s up to. Is she in love with Michael? Is she in with Murphy to screw Michael over? Is she in it for herself? There were really no answers at any point in this movie and got annoying.

Of course, if you like shoot ‘em up, there’s plenty of that. The gang carries off their robbery early on, but not at a cost. In a bizarre sequence in which it seemed over one hundred casino security guards charged at the gang with guns a blazin’, I kind of grew tired of it all after a while. How stupid are these people? They kept running right into the gunfire. Then one of the gang, played by Christian Slater, does something stupid (actually it seems natural that Christian Slater would do something stupid, doesn’t it?), then Murphy does something stupid, and before long, it’s Murphy and Michael and Cybil and her son and the money. And that’s where it definitely goes on too long. We go from Vegas to some small town north of Vegas to Idaho to the Canadian border and there seems to be no reason for it except to get us a two hour movie. In the good films of this type, such as a “Pulp Fiction”, there are crosses and double crosses and tough guys and gross, explicit death scenes and some witty dialogue. In this movie about the only thing there is is gross, explicit death scenes. And the only one that really worked for me is the one with Jon Lovitz and some arrows sticking out of him. He was annoying. But that was strange too. Was it necessary to see Lovitz in the death stare with these arrows piercing his corpse? I guess that was supposed to be funny. I think they tried a number of times to be funny or ironic in this movie and it failed. It often just came out weird.

I did like Costner and Russell. Costner plays the “bad bad guy” well. His carefree disregard for life is, at times, amusing. Russell got the “no fun’ part. He has to be the upstanding bad guy who bonds with the little boy and tries to figure out if the girl really loves him. It is maddening just how smart and worldly this kid is though. Enough with the young ones upstaging the tough guys. And if you see this movie, enough with the bullet-proof vest. You’ll know what I mean. “3,000 Miles To Graceland” is about that far from being a good movie. Lucky for them I like the genre. I give it a “5”on the scale.