I don't really know a lot about how indy movies like this come to be. This isn't the result of some determined filmmaker exhausting his credit cards to see his lifelong dream come to fruition. This isn't the product of some movie star slumming their way to artistic credibility. This wasn't some cracklin' crazy script that a producer fell in love with and just had to see made. There's no sex. There's no violence. There's no blasphemy or other provocative storytelling. It's not noticeably clever or whimsical and Saint John of Las Vegas sure as hell isn't funny. Yet, a few million dollars and a cast of talented performers somehow wound up entrusted to writer/director Hue Rhodes to do with as he saw fit. We would have all been better off if "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes had been given a shot at making a motion picture. 90 minutes of Sarah Silverman talking with a lisp and delivering the bionic elbow to every other member of the cast would have been more entertaining.
John (Steve Buscemi) is a sad sack with an out-of-date hairdo who works for an insurance company. He's also an absolutely, completely and utterly horrible gambler. He's the sort who'll buy 20 dollars of scratch-off lottery tickets and scratch them off in the store because he needs to win enough money to pay for the tickets. One day, John goes in to ask his boss (Peter Dinklage) for a raise and winds up getting assigned to investigate a fraudulent auto accident with Virgil (Romany Malco), the off-putting, hot shot lead investigator of the company. After banging his smiley face-obsessed cubicle neighbor (Sarah Silverman) in the handicapped bathroom, despite knowing she's involved with his boss, John sets out with Virgil on a voyage of non-discovery.
If I tell you that John and his "guide" Virgil eventually meet a guy named Lucypher (Matthew McDuffie), you can probably guess what metaphor is at work here. However, this story has as much in common with Dante's Inferno as the back of a box of Captain Crunch. Hue Rhodes had better hope there isn't a circle in Hell reserved for people who make homages as botched and listless as Saint John of Las Vegas. In fact, if you know someone who's watched this movie and doesn't know it's classical origins, don't tell them. After sitting through this lifeless dreck, they'll never want to read the original.
The actors here are all capable of fine work and Silverman looks pretty sexy while turning in a welcomely restrained performance. And for all his deficiencies as a storyteller, Rhodes' visual sensibility is at least more developed than the multitude of aspiring directors whose every inspiration seems to flow from music videos. But goodness gracious, this thing is not funny. It's not deliberately funny. It's not inadvertently funny. You can't laugh with it. You can't laugh at it. You can't laugh about it. The few times the film strays into the vicinity of a possibly comedic circumstance, like when John and Virgil encounter a nudist militia, writer/director Rhodes goes out of his way to avoid any humorous potential like an obsessive-compulsive who won't step on any cracks in the street.
Saint John of Las Vegas is so lame and pointless that the only reaction it can spark in the viewer is incredulity at how anyone ever thought this thing needed to be made. The on screen appeal of these actors is all that allows it to be tedious instead of torturous. They don't actually do anything worth watching, but their presence can at least distract you from how poorly conceived and structured is this production. But you'd still be better off reading Dante in the original language, even if the only Italian you know is Chef Boyardee.
John (Steve Buscemi) is a sad sack with an out-of-date hairdo who works for an insurance company. He's also an absolutely, completely and utterly horrible gambler. He's the sort who'll buy 20 dollars of scratch-off lottery tickets and scratch them off in the store because he needs to win enough money to pay for the tickets. One day, John goes in to ask his boss (Peter Dinklage) for a raise and winds up getting assigned to investigate a fraudulent auto accident with Virgil (Romany Malco), the off-putting, hot shot lead investigator of the company. After banging his smiley face-obsessed cubicle neighbor (Sarah Silverman) in the handicapped bathroom, despite knowing she's involved with his boss, John sets out with Virgil on a voyage of non-discovery.
If I tell you that John and his "guide" Virgil eventually meet a guy named Lucypher (Matthew McDuffie), you can probably guess what metaphor is at work here. However, this story has as much in common with Dante's Inferno as the back of a box of Captain Crunch. Hue Rhodes had better hope there isn't a circle in Hell reserved for people who make homages as botched and listless as Saint John of Las Vegas. In fact, if you know someone who's watched this movie and doesn't know it's classical origins, don't tell them. After sitting through this lifeless dreck, they'll never want to read the original.
The actors here are all capable of fine work and Silverman looks pretty sexy while turning in a welcomely restrained performance. And for all his deficiencies as a storyteller, Rhodes' visual sensibility is at least more developed than the multitude of aspiring directors whose every inspiration seems to flow from music videos. But goodness gracious, this thing is not funny. It's not deliberately funny. It's not inadvertently funny. You can't laugh with it. You can't laugh at it. You can't laugh about it. The few times the film strays into the vicinity of a possibly comedic circumstance, like when John and Virgil encounter a nudist militia, writer/director Rhodes goes out of his way to avoid any humorous potential like an obsessive-compulsive who won't step on any cracks in the street.
Saint John of Las Vegas is so lame and pointless that the only reaction it can spark in the viewer is incredulity at how anyone ever thought this thing needed to be made. The on screen appeal of these actors is all that allows it to be tedious instead of torturous. They don't actually do anything worth watching, but their presence can at least distract you from how poorly conceived and structured is this production. But you'd still be better off reading Dante in the original language, even if the only Italian you know is Chef Boyardee.