Flak Magazine: Review of 3000 Miles to Graceland, 02-27-01

There is no good indication why anyone attached to 3000 Miles to Graceland would actually have chosen to get involved. 3KMTG bombs on all levels and never decides on an identity. Each and every artist involved with the project has explaining to do. Allow me to draft some responses for you:

Director Demian Lichtenstein, between your Go-esque transitions and your Michael Bay action sequences, what exactly were you going for? "Well, see, this I'm not sure of. I've never made a major studio feature before, so I figured I'd try to please the most audiences by constantly shifting styles. Think of it as phases of the movie… that don't exactly match the phases of the narrative."

Writer Richard Recco, why did you abandon anything and everything Elvis twenty minutes into the movie? "Well, we figured people would tire of the Vegas-Elvis knockout punch that could've scored this film millions of followers. It's such a tired hook! Instead, we kept that neat storyline going, that one where Kevin Costner's character, Murph, is a possible illegitimate son of Elvis, despite being the person in the film — women and Bokeem Woodbine included — that looks the least like the King. You'd never expect it! But, we didn't want to focus on that, so it doesn't play into the story at all."

Kevin Costner, what did you see in this role? "This movie harkens back to groundbreaking cinema like Payback, where it's seeing which bad guys are bad and which ones are real, real bad. Kurt Russell turns out to be the nice bad guy, protecting Courtney Cox and her son, and I'm just the bad bad guy that the camera follows."

Costner, Russell, Woodbine, Christian Slater (following up The Contender with this?) and an intolerable David Arquette take off to rob the Riviera. Mishaps and backstabs abound, and the movie turns into Murph (Costner) and Michael (Russell) suspenselessly chasing each other across the Pacific Northwest to meet a money launderer (Jon Lovitz). Throw in Courtney Cox as the woman Russell screwed and then became attached to and David Kaye as her endearing yet confusing son. Wait, he's mute? Oh, and now he wants to be Michael's partner?

Costner's performance gives every indication he would have ruined this movie like he has so many others if every part of it wasn't already permeated with an unmistakably rotten smell. The movies gets two of its best performances from by Howie Long as the dumbass and Ice-T as the badass, but that may be entirely due to their taciturn nature. Cox reaffirms that she is a television actress with every film line she delivers. Russell would be enjoyable if his role was anything other than typical. What 3KMTG needs is an undeniably cool character, the kind that Benicio Del Toro is consistently churning out these days. Unfortunately, he's already done his Vegas flick. Hopefully, 3KMTG's sordid cast will likewise punch their dance cards and never come back to Sin City.

Why not ride Elvis into the ground? Why not play on him like the hook that never quits? After the robbery in the beginning, 3KMTG may as well have been an I Love Trouble retread. The previews portrayed a movie about The King, his convention, and the robbery that marred it. All the time, viewers are strung along on this thread by the lame Costner illegitimacy notion, which is consummated by nothing more than a glance in a mirror.

The only saving grace of this film is the combination of Kevin Pollak and Thomas Haden Church as the straight-men marshals tracking this mania across the western seaboard. In a movie this bad, how can a straight man not save it? They cut through the ridiculous story with sharp glances and grounded lines, but the filmmakers have to keep their roles muted so as not to expose 3KMTG as the lemon it is. It's not bad and knows it's bad, like Hudson Hawk and Almost Heroes. It's bad and thinks it's good. Marshals tracking Elvis impersonators across the country may not have been so bad. Marshals tracking the supposed son of Elvis, who's chasing another Elvis conspirator with an on-and-off Southern drawl and a car full of trailer trash and three million in dirty money on his way to early retirement, now that, that's 3000 Miles to Graceland.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)