Guns, Girls and Gambling (2011)

When you look at the career of any actor or actress there are always these movies you would never expect them to appear in. I never expected Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder, Jeff Goldblum in Death Wish or Seth Rogen in Donnie Darko. When I saw that Gary Oldman was starring in this movie as Elvis I just had to check it out. He’s a true chameleon and I was interested to see what he would do with the role, but with a title like that my expectations of the movie itself were very low.

John Smith (Christian Slater) wants to get away from everything as he just broke up with his girlfriend. He decides to go to a casino (instead of taking out his phone and gambling in an online casino) to have a great time between the slot machines, blackjack and poker tables to blow off some steam. He sees the casino runs an Elvis impersonation contest, which he joins. Although there are only 5 competitors he doesn’t stand a chance against “Elvis” Elvis (Gary Oldman). After the contest ends he plays some poker with all of them, which is as he states “not the poker you see on TV, but the good old fashioned closed hand poker”. He gets to know the people at the table a bit better and has a great time, but wakes up the next moment alone, picked up by the Native Americans who run the casino and he’s asked where he has hidden an ancient Indian mask, which helps them to be successfull. He has no idea what they are talking about.

It’s the beginning of a tough two days in which everyone seems to be after him, thinking that he has the mask. Knowing that one of the other Elvises must have it he tries to track them down. He’s not the only one who does this though as “The Blonde” (Helena Mattsson, who looks stunning in the film), “The Chief”, “The Rancher” (Powers Boothe), “The Cowboy” (Jeff Fahey) and other are all looking for it.

It’s only the beginning of the year, but I have the feeling this will probably be the worst movie I will see this year. There is so much I didn’t like about it that it’s hard to decide where to start exactly. The movie is obviously inspired by Tarantino movies, but never manages to reach those hights. It jumps in time and replays some pieces way too much that it made me wonder if there was enough footage to make a 90 minute movie.

There were little annoyances, like the Comic Sans font being used to indicate the time period. Jokes were re-used way too much (and they mostly seemed to be about stereotypes) and unfortunately didn’t manage to make me laugh and the dialogue just didn’t feel natural. Gary Oldman is in the movie, but unfortunately only for a couple of scenes, in which we don’t see him do very much (not even why he has won the contest). The movie has 3 girls, lots of guns and a minimum of gambling and very little to enjoy. I hoped I’d get more out of the movie, but struggled to get through it. A pulp B-movie, which surely will be liked by some, but I’m not one of them.