Bad for so many reasons
First off, I love Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell. (My wife calls Kevin Costner my man crush.) And I have always been a fan of Elvis. So this seemed right up my alley.
The problems:
1) It's one movie cliche after another. The single mom with a heart of gold and the wise-cracking son that has a proclivity to do bad, but of course is a great kid underneath. The ex-con who also has a heart of gold underneath his criminal record. Then there's the bad guy who's so 1-dimensional that there's nothing redeemable or likeable about him, which makes him so easy to hate.
2) The movie climaxes in the first 20 minutes with the heist. After that, it's all downhill.
3) The movie was way too long. It should've been a 90 minute movie. The fact that this was more than 2 hours just goes to show you what happens when big egos combine with bad writing and no editing. The last action sequence was as long as it was unnecessary.
4) This movie needed to eliminate the Courtney Cox and child subplot. It added nothing to the movie. It simply made the story more convoluted and pointless. He should've dumped them the first chance he got. The whole romance bit was poorly devised and not believable.
5) Courtney Cox left her kid with an ex-con she knew for all of a couple days. She later tried to defend her reprehensible actions, but it just made her look even more stupid. Her character was despicable (having sex with a stranger with her son in the room) and then leaving her son with him at a diner.
6) There was just too much going on. Too many useless characters (Ice T, Jon Lovitz, Wombat man, etc.). Too many genres being jumped in and out of (dark comedy, action, romance, etc.). In the end, all of the characters were poorly developed and thus, I didn't care what happened to any of them.
7) How many silly reunions did we have to watch between mother and son? They were separated, then reunited, separated, then reunited, separated...we get it!!! Enough with the melodrama. I didn't care the first time they were separated.
8) Too many unbelievable scenes. The girl at the gas station not caring when her father and home were blown up. The helicopter flying off the roof of the Casino with the police not tracking it. Christian Slater's intentionally antagonizing Costner when he knows he's a loose cannon that kills anyone on sight without thinking twice. Costner acting heartbroken when the black guy died on the helicopter, despite the fact that he was going to kill him later that night anyway. Kevin Costner shooting Kurt Russell TWICE in the chest and leaving him for dead. How's this for an idea? Shoot people in the head when you know they have a history of wearing bullet-proof vests. The list of silly, unbelievable scenes goes on and on.
I'll stop here. You get the point.
I understand that people like heist movies, and they like revenge movies, and they like shoot 'em up movies with a lot of action sequences. But why rave over this movie. Certainly there are a lot of other good action movies that don't have this many plot holes and this much silly writing.