Don't listen to the negative reviews

A Masterpiece!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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elbow to every other member of the cast would have been more entertaining.John (Steve Buscemi) is a sad sack with an out-of-date hairdo who works for an insurance company.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), a recovering gambler, is sent back to Las Vegas by his employer to research insurance fraud. Along the way he must face junkyard thugs, a crippled stripper and try to maintain a relationship with his less-than-stable girlfriend (Sarah Silverman).This story is somehow based on the writings of Dante Aligheri. I don't see it. I freely admit by knowledge of "Inferno" and "Paradiso" is not on the level it could be, but this had to be a very loose interpretation to say the least. However, regardless of the source material, the finished product is a gem that sadly did not get the full attention it deserved. This should have been a major theatrical release and success rather than a film festival darling.Sure, it has that "independent" feel to it, like a darker "Garden State"... but if people like Wes Anderson can make it big off of the indie film feeling, why not this film? Steve Buscemi has a huge cult following, as does Sarah Silverman. Buscemi was what attracted me to this film -- he has never failed to disappoint me in any of his roles from "Big Lebowski" to "Ghost World" to "Reservoir Dogs". One of the biggest flaws another indie film, "Floundering", made was using Buscemi too little.The directing is tight, the story is tight... the word "tight" is really the way to describe this film. The pace keeps steady, with never a dull moment despite not really being anything close to an action film. John is a perfect everyman inserted into odd situations (did I mention the nudists?) so we can both sympathize with him, yet enjoy that he has quirks we wouldn't, and weaknesses we do not. It is as though watching our best friend on an adventure.If you missed this one on the festival circuit (and let's be frank, most of us do not have the luxury of attending them), please do yourself a favor and rent this film, or perhaps even purchase it. I think it's the kind of film that will have a strong word-of-mouth fan base, and it would be in your best interest to discover it before all your friends have first. So many films slip under the radar... don't let "Saint John of Las Vegas" be one of them.

Steve Buscemi holds this one together, the other main characters are impossible to identify with - either because they don't say much or they are mysterious and mean. There are a lot of bizarre situations that are thrown in which don't really further the storyline but show off a type of artistic creativeness. They definitely had a lot of good ideas here, and perhaps the movie would have been more interesting if they simply abandoned the tired story line and went from one hypnotic scenario to the next (Like Fear and Loathing). But the main story (the story about the insurance fraud) progresses in the background without momentum and when it is finally resolved it feels anticlimactic. But there is another story here, perhaps more important - the one concerning Steve Buscemis past. This could have been developed into a compelling and meaningful drama but it is only used to further the comedy (and to tack on the Confucious ending) There are a few laughs along the way here and a good deal of cute/quirky ideas. Could have been improved with a bit of storyline editing beforehand.

I've seen a lot of interpretations on Dante's Inferno: the guy enters hell. From here to saying any movie about someone's falling is an interpretation is a stretch. And I know the writer and the director thought they were being smart doing a modern adaptation from a story no one really cares about and basically replacing everything, but I was the one watching, and I didn't find it smart, interesting or even good.Steve Buscemi is one of my favorite actors, and he did play the part well, but the plot was simply a boring, useless, close to horizontal, descent into a hell that few people could have related to. The funny parts were not funny, the smart parts were obtuse, the action parts not existent. Oh, wait a minute... it was MY descent into hell, when I realize I've just wasted an hour and a half of my life for no good reason. I see now... really smart.Bottom line: Sorry, Mr. Buscemi, sorry sexy Sarah Silverman, the film just sucked for me.