Word: infernos
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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What are the similarities between Dante Alighieri and Steve Buscemi? First time writer and director Hue Rhodes may be the only one. Loosely based on Dante’s “Inferno,” “Saint John of Las Vegas” follows a reformed gambler’s trip to his own personal “hell” as he is led on his first investigation of insurance fraud. However, though the performances are uniformly strong, only viewers who are already deeply familiar with Dante’s poem will be able to understand...
...Wait a minute. Alighieri. Virgil. Road trip. Where's hell? Las Vegas, of course. Using Dante's Inferno as your inspiration is an immodest act for someone making his feature film debut, but Rhodes does it so modestly that you'd hardly notice the connection. If the movie has a theme, it seems to be about making your own luck, which John doesn't believe in, initially. A bit involving an inexplicably flaming gate and a nudist colony led by Tim Blake Nelson should have been the tip off to an Inferno connection, but it feels trivial, just another slightly...
...closest Rhodes ever comes to capturing the Inferno's dark joys is a scene involving a flame-throwing circus performer with a malfunctioning suit. It's unclear how the flame thrower, who has some information on the stripper's car, relates to Dante's heretics in their flaming tombs, but he's got a broken zipper on his protective suit and a jammed fuel line that causes him to go up in flames every minute or so. And he's desperate for a cigarette. As a sight gag, it works, and the flaming man's relative optimism that such...