The Vegas Strip War (1984 TV Movie) User Reviews

Down, but not out

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 6 January 2016]

The ravages of his final illness were clearly demonstrable when Rock Hudson stars in The Vegas Strip Wars. Hudson plays a man of Las Vegas whose partners first toast him and then knife him in the back.

But Hudson is a man of brains and talent and someone that people like and trust. Something that his former partner Madison Mason just cannot understand.

After getting knifed by Mason and bought out of The Desert Inn, Hudson fronts another syndicate looking to buy into the Tropicana Club which is near bankrupt. He succeeds in making a go of it, but he's still squeezed very hard. In the end Hudson falls back on the skills that first brought him to Las Vegas.

Years before Martin Scorsese made Casino which I consider to be the ultimate film about Las Vegas, Sharon Stone got to co-star in The Vegas Strip War with Rock Hudson. She's much younger here and not been around the block as much as her character in Casino. Still she scores well in a part that has here in a May/September romance with Hudson.

Stealing every scene that he's in is James Earl Jones doing a riotous takeoff of Don King. Part of Hudson's plan is to land a heavyweight championship bout for his gambling palace. Jones is funny, but he's also very shrewd.

Even the sight of a gaunt and clearly ill Hudson won't prevent you from enjoying The Vegas Strip Wars.

Rock really rock's in his last motion picture appearance

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 7 June 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Already showing sings of his advanced and fatal AIDS condition that's to take his life within a year Rock Hudson, looking gaunt and shrunken, as Desert Inn Casino owner Neil Chaine is at his best as he gears up for a showdown with those greedy rats and former partners Gray Ryan & Marvin Berman, Madison Mason & Robert Gammell, who stole his casino from right under his feet. And he does it on their own home turf as well: The Desert Inn's crap table!

Secretly buying Chaine out and then kicking him out of the casino both Ryan & Berman planned to make the Desert Inn even a bigger draw, for big time million plus rollers and gamblers, then it ever was under Chaine's management! But with Chaine using his buy out money to purchase the near bankrupt Tropicana Casino it made that very difficult for them to accomplish.

After getting his gaming license to run the Tropicana Chaine went to work making it the most popular casino in all of Las Vages! It's then in desperation Ryan & Berman started to play dirty in trying to get a major heavyweight fight at the Tropicana Casino involving up and coming and undefeated boxer Sweetwater Jackson's, Philip Brown, manager and good friend of Chaine Stan Markham, Robert Costanzo, to switch the fight to the Desert Inn instead. That's by their goons showing up at the gym or training camp and threatening to break Sweetwater's arms and murder his manager Stan Markham if he didn't go along with them! Chaine also faced an acute money or cash flow problem when a number of high rollers from Hong Kong took him to the cleaners by winning almost five million dollars at the baccarat tables in his casino. With Chaine now facing total ruin he takes whatever money is still has left in the Tropicana Casino bank vault and heads down or across the street to the Desert Inn to gamble it at the crap tables in the hope of breaking the bank there and saving the Tropicana! A big order but in Chaine's case, with him really having nothing to lose, it was more then worth it on his part!

***SPOILERS*** Thense and nerve wrecking final as a cool as a cucumber Chaine laid it, all $350,000.00 of it, all on the pass line at the crap tables and hoped for the dice to roll in his favor. Predictable but heart stopping ending with Chaine putting all his winnings, that by then was over five million dollars, on his one last "Hail Mary" shot or roll to redeem himself, as a big time Las Vages casino operator, and save his casino. Win or lose Chaine showed those who deserted as well as tried to destroy him that he's not a man to be taken lightly with him walking away with all the marbles or cash and them, those who bet against him, ending up completely kaput!

P.S Check out a drop dead gorgeous 26 year old Sharon Stone as Chaine's girlfriend or love interest in the movie Sharah Shipman as well as an obnoxious and overly hairy looking, wearing a wig as big as a bald eagle nest, James Earl Jones as Jack Madrid who was obviously imitating or plying boxing promoter Don King.

the bitter taste

[Kirpianuscus · 8 February 2018]

It is not easy or enough fair to say something good or bad about this film. for the admirers of Rock Hudson, the mix of sadness and admiration, first for the tired and ill man, the last for decent performance in a film about a world of appearences , is the basic piece. for large public, seductive job of James Earl Jones could be axis of the film. and, sure, the interesting performane of Sharone Stone. but the films is far to be dessapointment. maybe, for right use of the rules of genre. second, for the status of TV show, giving to public what it expect. and, not the last, for atmosphere. and humor. so, a seductive film.