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The best word for this film is "uncomfortable." From beginning to end, "Saint John of Las Vegas" makes you feel the awkwardness that pervades compulsive gambler John's (Steve Buscemi) life since he fled Vegas towing a wide load of debt and legal problems brought on by his addiction. As the movie opens, John is working a desk job at a car insurance agency in Albuquerque, where he spends a lot of time staring pensively into mirrors and buying lottery tickets at gas station convenience stores. He's a loser, but at least he's self-aware: In his voice-overs, John repeatedly notes that things could have wound up a lot worse.
Eventually, though, his gambling nature gets the best of him. John takes a chance on asking his boss for a raise and a cute co-worker (Sarah Silverman, playing psycho-sweet a little too well) for something else entirely, and soon he's on a roadtrip back to Nevada with orders to debunk a local woman's accident claim. Along for the ride is the agency's frosty-cool top adjuster Virgil (Romany Malco), who openly hates him.
Again, unease is the mood of choice in "Saint John." Whether John's facing down gun-wielding nudists or getting a lap-dance from a wheelchair-bound stripper, you will squirm right along with the poor guy. Worst of all are the scenes in which John is clearly trying to get people to like him but failing miserably. Buscemi absolutely nails these painful conversations and his famously creepy presence is put to great use throughout.
But is the fact that a movie succeeds in setting a tone reason enough to see it? Well, maybe. There's not a bad performance in the bunch, and director Hue Rhodes does a killer job showing off the utter desolation and strangeness of the Mojave Desert (and, by implication, of John himself). But as the movie gets more disjointed and arbitrary weirdness seems to become the entire point, you start to get the feeling that someone is whispering "Look at this original independent film!" into your ear a bit too insistently.
It's jarring when the "X-Files" episodes abruptly stop and you suddenly realize you're watching the end of the movie. The conclusion feels organic to John himself, but leaves virtually every other thread of the plot hanging in space. It reinforces the film's view that luck is an unreasoning force, but it also leaves viewers wondering what all the rest of it was for.
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