Courteney Cox in 3000 Miles to Graceland (2001)

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The Robbins Recipe: take Reindeer Games, replace the little casino with a big casino. Increase the budget. Change the Santa outfits to Elvis. You're there.

One of my regular correspondents dropped me a line warning me to keep an eye on this one, because the advance word hinted that it could be a disaster of Battlefield Earth proportions.

Financially and artistically, that might be true, but it isn't the kind of disaster that is really fun to rip. It isn't conceptually ludicrous like Habitat, or over-the-top camp like Battlefield Earth, or philosophically pretentious trash like Road House. Instead, it has the core of a good movie, but is edited, cast, and focused completely wrong.

Here are some signs that it might have contained a good movie somewhere inside it:

1.The trailer is one of the best in the last couple of years.

2.The music video, featuring Kurt Russell as Elvis, and played over the closing credits, is great fun.

3.There are some pretty cool people in this movie. I mean, who's cooler than Snake Plisskin? Not to mention Christian Slater, David Arquette, Jon Lovitz and plenty more. Even the people with one or two lines are pretty cool, like Kevin Pollak, Ice-T, Paul Anka, and Howie Long.

Then what the hell happened to make it so bad? Well, as I see it, it went down like this. It could have been a hip, stylish fast-paced action caper ala Oceans 11, or a trash-talkin' gore fest ala Tarantino, or a wacky comedy ala an adult version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, or a sweet love story about bad people who find some redemption and learn to trust each other, and get a second chance.

But you can't really combine all of those. Imagine that you have Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant, tracking down the Three Stooges. Just doesn't really work does it?

·You can't show me Kurt Russell blowing away about a zillion federal agents, then expect me to really enjoy the ending where he sails off with his boat and his new family. OK, I know he wasn't as bad a guy as Costner's character, but he was pretty bad. I rooted for the George Clooney character to get a second chance in Out of Sight, but he didn't single-handedly make orphans of the children of a zillion cops.

·You can't make lots of zany jokes combined with brutal killing. Costner kids about killing people, then slays them anyway, and we see his brutality in graphic detail. Why are we supposed to enjoy this, or pay to see it? Is cavalier disdain for human life a form of wacky entertainment? If so, there may yet be hope for my Charles Manson sitcom.

·The casting doesn't really work for combining genres - do you want to make Jon Lovitz a famous money launderer, or to make federal agents of Pollak and Thomas Haden Church? I guess that would work pretty well in a pure comedy, but these were essentially serious roles.

In fact, I didn't understand the casting of Lovitz and Church at all. Pollak did OK because he's versatile, but he was essentially wasted. Of course, Pollak was only one of many talented people who had nothing to do with their primary talents. Russell, Slater, Arquette and others can be very cool when they have the right material. They either didn't have the right material (Russell), or any material (Slater and Arquette).

When all was said and done, it simply developed into Reindeer Games with different costumes and an even meaner-spirited attitude. Period.

So blame the director for failing to assemble a worthwhile whole out of some promising parts. And blame Kurt Russell for not knowing better. Not only did he first become a star by playing Elvis flawlessly back in 1979, but he made his film debut in an Elvis movie as the little kid who was a constant thorn in The King's side in It Happened at the World's Fair in 1963!

Nudity Report: Natalie Radford showed her breasts, and Robert Donovan exposed his butt. Courteney Cox also shows off some brief upper-butt crack in bed.

Critics Vote: Roger Ebert 1.5/4, Berardinelli 0.5/4, Apollo 45

IMDB Summary: 5.5 out of 10

Box Office: It should end up as a disaster. It was made for $62 million, and will probably finish with domestic gross below $20 million, despite a near-blockbuster 2500 screen distribution plan.

DVD Info: widescreen anamorphic, 1.85:1. Full-length director's commentary

Written by: Scoopy …Scoopy.net