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  (Left to right) David Arquette, Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner, Christian Slater, and Bokeem Woodbine star in the Vegas-centered action-thriller “3000 Miles to Graceland.”

By Dave Holmberg

Daily Bruin Contributor

Although “3000 Miles to Graceland” may be a long way from the King’s hometown, it hits Las Vegas right on the money – after about half an hour you are wondering where your money went and you want to go home.

The film begins as a visually pleasing and entertaining spectacle, complemented by the attractive music video style of director Demian Lichtenstein.

The principal characters are quickly introduced, and there is no question as to their motives – they are going to rob a Las Vegas casino.

Michael Zane (Kurt Russell) is a recently released convict ready to get back in the game. Kevin Costner, in his first entertaining role for quite some time, plays Thomas Murphy, a ruthless mass murderer who believes he is Elvis Presley’s illegitimate child.

The rest of the thugs are rounded out by Franklin (Christian Slater), Gus (David Arquette) and Hanson (Bokeem Woodbine), none of whom survive into for very long.

Additionally, Courtney Cox plays the love interest Cybil – a single mother of an interfering young boy, Jesse (David Kaye).

From the offset, trusting is a very detrimental action for the characters in the film and it leads to practically everyone’s deaths.

Dressed as Elvis impersonators, the five outlaws successfully rob a casino of $3.2 million dollars and kill an impressive number of people in the process. Typically, visitors to Vegas just lose a lot of money. In this case, many hand over their lives.

This is perhaps the most entertaining sequence, as the casino is riddled with bullets and the excess that characterizes Las Vegas once again prevails.

Unfortunately, when someone gets moral, the film falls apart.

Zane does not ever kill anyone and it is apparent that he is bound to do the right thing. While this might not sound like a problem, a conscious severely damages a Las Vegas film and ultimately undermines everything the city stands for.

In order for the city to be portrayed successfully on film, it must be given its due respect.

In “Leaving Las Vegas” for example, Nicolas Cage plays a man on a mission to drink himself to death. He correctly chooses Las Vegas as his sight for accomplishing his sobering task and along the way, falls in love with a prostitute played by Elizabeth Shue.

This painfully brilliant film finds its male characters each leading lives of excess marked by alcohol and sex, which beat them down amid the lights and slot machines.

Within the context of the city, this all seems acceptable – in fact Vegas appears indifferent to the plight of the individual. Never is the excess overcome and Vegas is triumphant.

Nevada’s claim to fame wins again in Terry Gilliam’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” based on the Hunter S. Thompson novel. A writer (Johnny Depp) and a lawyer (Benicio del Toro) travel to the city in search of the illusive American Dream – with, of course, the help of a good deal of psychedelic drugs.

Their search leads them into an out of control descent into the demon of Vegas itself. The city becomes a metaphor for the American world of excess and hype and the characters revel in it as they destroy hotel rooms, consume alcohol and cause general mischief at a terrific rate.

The city is a drug and soon it becomes difficult to distinguish between the real and the imagined worlds, although there is the impression that in Vegas, fact and fantasy are rather arbitrary.

Likewise, Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” recreates the mob underworld of 1970s and 1980s Vegas. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci are two thugs who rise up to become powerful players in the shady gambling business. The mobsters are ruthless and brutal, revealing the true money lusting nature of Vegas.

None of the characters can overcome the city’s winning hand, and all fall to its treachery. This is the Vegas of deceit and evil and in the end, all are infected by its greed.

The key to all of these films is the acknowledgment that Las Vegas is a beast, a living and breathing villain that will always dominate because it preys on human nature. It will eat you up and spit your remains in the gutter because it does not care about you.

Yet, Vegas is compelling because everyone wants to be rich, and it pretends to offer this possibility to all.

Of course, most people understand that they will leave the city a loser. The last three films win, however, because the heroes unquestionably fail to beat the insurmountable Vegas.

This is precisely where “3000 Miles to Graceland” suffers. Morality must never prevail in a film pertaining to the city of sin. Russell’s character saves the lives of Cox and Kaye because he loves them.

Love successfully helps them all achieve their goals, which is a stark contrast to the doomed and destructive love found between Cage and Shue in “Leaving Las Vegas” or De Niro and Stone in “Casino.”

On the other hand, Costner’s ruthless Elvis impersonator works as a character because he mirrors Las Vegas. He is over-the-top in every way and completely unbelievable, caring only about money. This is how visitors to Vegas must act to not be eaten alive by the city.

Sadly, “3000 Miles to Graceland” falls just short of being entertainingly bad. The film fights to make itself an action movie with a twist, but fails because it picked on the wrong city.

Let that be a lesson: Las Vegas can not be taken lightly.

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