Despite the title, Vegas isn’t really about Vegas. It’s about the personal yen to drink, smoke and take shortcuts, and about gullibility and addiction and obsession and being so single-minded that it destroys one’s family and sanity. It could essentially be set anywhere (and was primarily filmed in Pahrump), but Iranian writer/director/producer/editor Naderi has determined the above as defining traits of the Vegas that truly exists off the Strip.

CineVegas 2009

Vegas: Based on a True Story

Mark Greenfield, Nancy LaScala, Zach Thomas.

Directed by Amir Naderi.

IMDb: Vegas: Based on a True Story

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Film reviews

Aside from that central concept being somewhat offensive to locals and further enforcing down-and-out stereotypes to tourists and beyond, camera angles intended to convey inner turmoil are distracting and amateurish; the sparse dialogue is predominantly subpar. The plot, while acknowledging a local (again, Pahrump) urban legend of a dogged and ultimately demented search for the Gibson Gang’s buried stash, becomes ludicrous in execution. The only impressive acting in the small collection of newcomers is courtesy of Zach Thomas, portraying a neglected 12-year-old whose impoverished parents seem to have curiously scraped their pennies together for his designer haircut and blond highlights. The only real Vegas here comes through in the breezy, sunset scatterings of untamed dust, and in the held panoramic shots of distant lights. The rest is merely fiction.