Take a second to compare either film to the vast majority of action movies being churned out today, and you'll see just how brilliant they really are.
3000 Miles to Graceland
I put this in the same box as Deep Rising - it's a film no one's ever heard of, it was critically panned on release, and it happens to be one of my all-time favourites. Kurt Rusell, Kevin Costner and their crew of ne'er-do-wells all dress up as Elvis Presley to rob a Vegas casino during an Elvis convention. If memory serves, this came out about the same time as Oceans 11, and whereas in that film the robbers use guile and cunning to pull off the heist without harming a single soul, here they just f*cking shoot the shit out of the place - even the midget Elvis catches a stray bullet.
I can't express how much I love Russell and Costner in this. They clearly both understand the tone the movie was going for and just have a ball with it. Russell throws in just enough Elvis impersonations at opportune moments that the gag doesn't get old (he actually played Elvis in a TV movie back in the day, and also voiced the King in Forest Gump, so his mannerisms are pretty spot on). Did I mention that his character is revealed to be the illegitimate child of Elvis at the end of the film?
The action's class and the characters, right down to the minor supporting ones only on screen for a few moments, are all great. The soundtrack's pretty ace too, with a host of perfectly-chosen songs used to style-up the sequences.
Finally, it ends with Kurt Russell doing a mimed performance of Elvis' "Such a Night" while the rest of the cast dance around waving guns. It's wonderfully mad.
