"Las Vegas Shakedown" is a wildly uneven film...with writing that is occasionally brilliant...and also occasionally terrible. It also is a strange sort of film...with lots of stories that look like they come from "The Love Boat" combined with gritty film noir!!
The story is set in a Las Vegas resort owned by Joe Barnes (Dennis O'Keefe). He is a tough sort and his bottom line seems to be making money...which is odd since later in the film he's a benevolent benefactor! But no matter for now. The normally unflappable Barnes is worried as he's received word that someone is coming to get him...but who? In the midst of all this suspense, oddly enough, he meets and falls in love with a woman (Coleen Gray), fixes a couple marriages AND manages to take on and beat the baddies coming for him!!
On the plus side, Thomas Gomez generally plays a wonderfully vicious criminal. I loved how he was so heartless...especially towards the end. But the film ALSO makes him utterly ridiculous, such as when the very rotund guy (he looks like he weighs close to 300 pounds) climbs out a window with more grace than Douglas Fairbanks! It's obviously a stuntman and the director was, frankly, an idiot for allowing this scene to be made in the first place!! What also never should have been in the film was making Barnes so very hard and money-hungry....yet also benevolent and quick to give away the casino's winnings...which simply made no sense. What also didn't make sense was the nice old banker and his wife...they were cute...but the ending portion with him and his wife (Charles Winninger and Elizabeth Patterson) was nonsensical. Overall, a tough film that also tries to be heart-warming and sweet...and only ends up being frustrating as a result. I really wanted to like this film.
