7 Days to Vegas by Vince Van Patten

https://youtu.be/QSn9xxShL8U

I listened to the Poker Stories interview with Vince Van Patten. He tells some interesting stories during his professional tennis days, playing poker in Gardenia, playing in Hollywood home games, the start of the WPT, and his latest project 7 Days to Vegas which was based on his group of home game poker players and the many crazy prop bets they made. I haven't seen the movie yet, but you can rent it for $3.99 on Amazon Prime now. I'll probably just wait until it's free. Any critiques?

I've watched the movie and enjoyed it as a one time viewing only type of film.

Their were some funny moments and overall the flow of it goes smoothly.

BUMP

This is now free for Amazon Prime members

https://www.amazon.com/Days-Vegas-Vi...6731127&sr=8-1

I thought it was Dick van Patten.

Watching it right now.

Found out 33 minutes in that VVP's character is 48 years old -- just like me.

I thought, "No fucking way that's anywhere near his age."

Looked him up. He was 61 when they filmed this.

48.

:lol

Anyway, pretty enjoyable with some creative twists, though I felt the ending was kinda predictable. I won't reveal anything though.

 

*giggling*

BTW I wanted to talk a bit about the geography in the movie, regarding his walk from the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles) to Vegas.

I was actually fairly impressed with its authenticity. They clearly couldn't film on I-15, but they found enough excuses to send the main character off the main highway (usually claiming "shortcuts"), and indeed, in those locations, there really were small roads going that direction.

The only BS part was where he was walking on a 2-lane paved road from Baker to the Nevada state line, which supposedly follows I-15. No such road exists. You're either taking the freeway or going waaaay out of the way.

Watched this a couple months ago and it exceeded my expectations. With these types of indie films there's always the danger of it looking very "cheap" with how it's shot and edited but this movie has decent production values.

One thing they did which annoyed me is something they seem to do in every bad poker movie since Rounders is to have a poker pro cameo. We all remember the famous Johnny Chan scene in Rounders which was great. So that has become part of the "poker movie formula" and it's just so bad. In 7 Days to Vegas there's a scene where someone says, "And then poker pros Phil Laak and Antonia Esfandiari showed up!" or something to that effect. Completely unnecessary. It's just so on the nose and trite.

Otherwise, I'd give the movie a solid 7/10.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Shrink

Watched this a couple months ago and it exceeded my expectations. With these types of indie films there's always the danger of it looking very "cheap" with how it's shot and edited but this movie has decent production values.

One thing they did which annoyed me is something they seem to do in every bad poker movie since Rounders is to have a poker pro cameo. We all remember the famous Johnny Chan scene in Rounders which was great. So that has become part of the "poker movie formula" and it's just so bad. In 7 Days to Vegas there's a scene where someone says, "And then poker pros Phil Laak and Antonia Esfandiari showed up!" or something to that effect. Completely unnecessary. It's just so on the nose and trite.

Otherwise, I'd give the movie a solid 7/10.

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100% agree, and this comes from someone who personally likes Phil Laak. I cringed when that cameo scene took place, and knew it would suck before I saw it play out. Sure enough, it met expectations in that fashion. As you said, totally unnecessary.

I also didn't understand why they underused character actor Willie Garson. We saw him at the beginning as one of the players in the game, then barely saw him again. I thought he would have been good in a movie like this. Maybe he wasn't available or too expensive for more than he appeared.

I watched it. I like VVP, so he carried it for me. I also enjoyed seeing Paul Walter Hauser from "Richard Jewell," which I think was the most underrated movie of 2019.

great long con