Cast: Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, Christian Slater, Courteney Cox, Howie Long, Jon Lovitz, David Arquette, Ice-T, Bokeem Woodbine, Kevin Pollak
Director: Demian Lichtenstein
Producers: Demian Lichtenstein, Eric Manes, Elie Samaha, Richard Spero, Andrew Stevens
Screenplay: Richard Recco and Demian Lichtenstein
Cinematography: David Franco
Music: George S. Clinton
U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers
You know you're in trouble when a movie has more Elvis impersonators than it has brain cells. You know you're in trouble when you're looking at your watch before the opening credits have finished. And you really know you're in trouble when the best performance is turned in by none other than Howie Long, that noted NFL pre-game show anchor guy and Radio Shack pitch-man. (I kept looking for either Terry Bradshaw or Teri Hatcher, but didn't see either of them.) Some movies are bad; 3000 Miles To Graceland is excruciating. It should be banned from theaters on the grounds that anyone unwittingly seeing it is being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
As the end credits for 3000 Miles To Graceland rolled, I stalked from the theater, muttering all sorts of unprintable things under my breath. Someone, perhaps unaware of my disposition at the moment, politely asked what I thought of the film. My rather terse response was: "I hated that movie. I despised that movie. I loathed that movie." (At that point, in my exasperation, I ran out of synonyms.) If I wasn't afflicted with an obsessive/compulsive disorder about watching an entire movie before reviewing it (hey, I went back to see Battlefield Earth after a power failure cut short my first opportunity), I would have walked out on this one. Then I could have spent the rest of the evening doing something more enjoyable - like scrubbing the toilets or grouting the shower.
So, this is what Kevin Costner's career has come to. Once one of the hottest talents in Hollywood, he has now been reduced to dressing up as Elvis and doing his best to exude an aura of menace. It's kind of like Costner trying to imitate Dennis Hopper trying to imitate Elvis. I'm not sure who told Dances With Wolves he could play a villain. It's something he has never tried before, and hopefully won't attempt again. Instead of ranting and raving (which might have injected a little energy into this lethargic production), he internalizes everything (that's a nice way of saying he shows little evidence of a personality). Rather than snarling, he mumbles. Costner's career hasn't been in high gear lately, but this is easily the worst film he has ever made. Next to this, Revenge is a masterpiece of subtlety and tension, Malibu Hot Summer (also known as Sizzle Beach, U.S.A.) is a portrait of dramatic restraint, and The Postman is a grand epic. Maybe the reason Costner is dressed up as Elvis is because he hopes no one will recognize him. In fact, that would explain why just about everyone in this movie is dressed as Elvis.
Some time during post-production, it was rumored that the producers asked both Costner and co-star Kurt Russell to assemble their own cuts of the movie. According to the story, Costner's more action-oriented version was chosen over Russell's character-based one. Of course, this leads to an obvious question: if we got the better cut, what did the other one look like? Actually, the movie shouldn't have been cut, it should have been burned.
3000 Miles To Graceland starts out as an unimaginative caper movie, then turns into an inert road picture. (Note: the road picture is not my favorite genre. Unless the characters are brilliantly defined and consistently engaging, things turns into an exercise in repetitive tedium. This movie is an extreme example of how awful the situation can get.) The basic premise has a bunch of Elvis impersonators, led by tough-guy Murph (Costner) and the much nicer Mike (Kurt Russell), robbing a Vegas casino. There are other Elvises with them (including one played by Christian Slater and another by David Arquette), but they don't last long enough to be worth more than a cursory mention. Plus, there's a tough-guy sidekick named Jack (Long), who doesn't do the Elvis thing. He sticks around a little longer. Eventually, Murph double-crosses Mike, and a long chase ensues as the two race the cops and each other for the Canadian border. Along for the ride is Cybil (Courteney Cox, looking like she's about 50 years old), a woman who has fallen for Mike's good looks and unassuming charm.
3000 Miles To Graceland is not dramatically solid. It does not have interesting or well-developed characters. It is not surprising, romantic, funny, or exciting. It is, in fact, deadly dull and seemingly unending. The director, Demian Lichtenstein, is not blessed with an unimpeachable record. This is his second feature (his first, according to the Internet Movie Database, was something called Lowball, which I don't think anyone has seen), and his work here betrays his music video roots. He uses all sorts of camera tricks in a vain attempt to obscure the fact that the screenplay (which he co-wrote) is garbage. There are lots of time-exposure shots, quick edits, and even a battle between two computer-generated scorpions. This is the kind of work Ed Wood would be proud of.
3000 Miles To Graceland contains a great deal of profanity and violence, none of which does anything to enhance the moribund tone. The film's two "showpiece" scenes are big shoot-outs, neither of which generates even a trickle of suspense or tension. They amount to a bunch of nameless, faceless thugs standing up and firing countless rounds of ammunition at each other. Occasionally, someone gets hit. He jerks around a little, then drops like a marionette with the strings snipped. The higher-billed a name is, the more likely that person's character has of surviving. After a while, the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire becomes so monotonous that it has a soporific effect. Those who stay in the theater for the entire movie (and remain awake for the duration - sleeping is cheating) deserve some kind of medal.
I briefly flirted with the idea of peppering my review with lyrics from Elvis songs, until I realized that the King didn't sing the kind of words I needed to use. The worst I could come up with was, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog," and that's hardly nasty enough to describe this motion picture. Maybe I should have looked to the philosophies of Eminem. How many other ways can I warn people to stay away from this movie? Perhaps one more: you know you're in trouble when a review compares a film to both the works of Ed Wood and Battlefield Earth.
© 2001 James Berardinelli