7 Days to Vegas is a romp movie inspired by the life of Vincent Van Patten. He is an actor who became a poker player and later a poker commentator. His real life brother plays his fictional brother in the movie.

Van Patten who has been immersed in the world of gambling pokes fun at gamblers and the absurd lengths they go to for various dares and side bets. Elements of the film are inspired by movies such as Battle of the Sexes and Christopher Nolan's The Prestige.

Van Patten plays Duke, a down on his luck actor who turned to underground poker games and made so much money, he had to bury a lot of it in his back garden. When Duke loses his money in a bad investment, he accepts a side wager by an obnoxious British film director that he can walk from the San Fernando Valley to Las Vegas in just one week. A distance of 280 miles but it will be in the blazing sun.

Duke has to do this while wearing a suit, no hat but he can take regular breaks in a RV that will follow him to make sure he does not cheat. The RV includes his gambling friends and foes, most of them are wacky like a man with a vulgar puppet ventriloquist act.

This is a lighthearted movie with an overkill of a voiceover that soon becomes irritating. The Scots actor playing the British director mimics Jason Statham for some reason. It has too many deliberate wacky characters that get lost in the mix. It moves along at a breezy pace unlike Duke after a few days of walking and it also has few dirty tricks tucked away.

This Van Patten family project is based on a true incident that happened to star Vincent Van Patten back in the 90s. He did actually make a bert he could walk from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 7 days. vince wrote the script allegedly based on some Hollywood characters he knew. They must have been some colorful bunch.

That's the strength of 7 Days To Vegas, the colorful characters that creator Vince Van Patten drew. The film is structured a whole lot like the Martin Scorsese classic Casino. As that is a real favorite of mine I couldn't help but like 7 Days To Vegas.

The villain of the piece is Ross McCall a full of himself director with a big bankroll who likes to take chances. He doesn't have even surface likability, but the money keeps people hanging on and he's a good gambler.

The climax belongs to brother James Van Patten. I won't say more, you have to see it to believe it.

This is one good enjoyable almost caper like film.

I clearly enjoyed it more than the actual ratings show and when I read the other reviews I'm apparently not the only one. Based on a true story, which makes it even better, 7 Days To Vegas is an easy to watch entertaining movie. I wouldn't say it's as funny as The Hangover, like some other reviewer wrote, but it has some good funny moments as well. Gambling on about anything, some hustling and cheating, a good cast and a well written plot makes this movie worth watching.