7 Days to Vegas

The Sting, this movie is not. But it definitely was a guilty pleasure if you enjoy films with a plot twists and "gotchas" at the end. Van Patten stars as the narrator and main character in this ensemble cast of degenerate, quirky gamblers. These characters distract viewers along the journey towards the somewhat predictable ending. But despite knowing the destination, I still had a good time.

This Van Patten family project is based on a true incident that happened to star Vincent Van Patten back in the 90s. He did actually make a bert he could walk from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 7 days. vince wrote the script allegedly based on some Hollywood characters he knew. They must have been some colorful bunch.

That's the strength of 7 Days To Vegas, the colorful characters that creator Vince Van Patten drew. The film is structured a whole lot like the Martin Scorsese classic Casino. As that is a real favorite of mine I couldn't help but like 7 Days To Vegas.

The villain of the piece is Ross McCall a full of himself director with a big bankroll who likes to take chances. He doesn't have even surface likability, but the money keeps people hanging on and he's a good gambler.

The climax belongs to brother James Van Patten. I won't say more, you have to see it to believe it.

This is one good enjoyable almost caper like film.

Pretty cool story. I can't believe this is actually true. Wasn't the greatest movie but definitely watchable. Found myself trying to Google everything about this story. Come to find out most of the characters are basically 4 or 5 people mixed into one. I wonder who the big film producer was. I'm guessing Charlie Sheen was the famous actor with a drug problem.

If this was actually presented as a reality show it would be a total disaster. But it is fiction "based on presumed real things some people might actually do" so for that it was at least fun to laugh at. It must have been written by a committee of wannabe writers/producers. What is real is that the concept makes it fun. How many times can two sides run a scam on each other? Many times. It was the only reason to watch this contrived accident. 5 stars is being generous. The fake quips about "what happened after/where are they now" lost at least 3 of their stars.

The film is well written, beautiful cinematography, super entertaining, with a gambling-tense comedy story line, well developed characters variety and a super twist. I enjoyed it. I laughed.