If I told you what I said. If I told you that the phrase that fell out of my mouth after watching this movie was “I would rather have seen another showing of Battlefield Earth” — would you believe me? I don’t even believe it myself, but I said it. No hesitation. Barely a stutter. This movie is worse than Battlefield Earth.
Or maybe I am being too harsh. After all, it has Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell in it. Oh, and let’s not forget Christian “Will Work for Food” Slater, David “Idiot and Proud” Arquette and Howie “Radio Shack Pitchman” Long. But it is easy to do, as each one of these seeming stars gets only a handful of onscreen time each. Arquette barely gets in his five or six lines, each of them delivered with the skill and verve that only a spokesman for CALL-ATT can muster, before he ends up a riddled corpse lying in a deep mud puddle in the desert. Mud. Desert. Hmm. Nevermind.
And they should all feel so lucky. Costner is chewing scenery like its beef jerky. Heck, he even chews beef jerky, literally. The basic premise, I suppose, is that Costner and Russell did time together in the Big House. Now they are both out of prison, and so it must be time for the Big Job. But then there is the whole Elvis impersonator thing. And this odd subplot about Elvis having two bastard sons, and they might just be… Then you have Ice-T show up for about three minutes to eat a jelly sandwich and do a bad Desperado impression. Oh, and Courtney Cox Arquette points her ass at the camera many times, and then there is this kid that witnesses all manner of brutality and hones his pickpocketing technique.
And you sit there watching Costner, hoping he might do something cool, since the sideburns do serve him well. But he never does. Then you turn to Russell, pray he saves it, and you realize that he is nothing but a bad Swayze with bluer eyes.
Did I tell you yet about the scorpions? This is what told me in the first 30 seconds that this film was going to disappoint me. First, some history.
Sam Peckinpah. Directed “The Wild Bunch” — the pivotal Western film that beautifully captured the end of the cowboy era. A landmark film. One that ends in a famous and bloody standoff between the anti-heroes and the not so just authorities. It is amazing. And it begins with scorpions, battling in the desert sand, much to the delight of sagebrush children watching closely. Real scorpions. No winners. Analogous to the fate that awaits the Wild Bunch.
Fast forward. Demian Lichtenstein. Director of such films as… well, one film actually. 1997. Called “Lowball” — reviewed simply in the IMDB with “In a word, avoid.” I never saw it. And now he begins “3000 Miles” with scorpions. 3-D scorpions. Looking as realistic as an airbrushed mural on the side of a 1978 Ford Econoline van. And these cyber-scorpions, well, they fight you see. One white, one black. And this is all filmed with the finesse of a bad Metallica video, perhaps even worse. And it looks hideous. What makes it worse is that the black scorpion figures later into the plot. Sort of.
It is bad. Not even “Let’s have a few beers and watch this” bad. The cinematography is poor and misplaced. The score sounds like scraps brushed from the floor of Jan Hammer (remember Miami Vice), and the Elvis tracks they managed to acquire aren’t even that good. Not even “Viva Las Vegas” is to be found. The writing is hackneyed and misogynistic.
In a word. Avoid.
