Saint John of Las Vegas is one thing that happened in Vegas that should have stayed there.

The relationship the film has with the Odyssey is perhaps not quite as direct as it was with O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but the similarities are notable enough to make this the oddest odyssey this side of the river Styx. But without the blessing of the gods, Saint John is one Homer doomed to obscurity.

What Saint John of Las Vegas has going for it is a cast that would make an indie director like Hal Hartley weep with envy: Steve Buscemi as John, a nearly reformed gambler ordered back to the den of thieves; Sarah Silverman as Jill, the cute-'n'-cuddly fuck-me-please office mate; Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) as Mr. Townsend the bizarro-world’s answer to Tony Robbins; and Romany Malco (The 40 Year Old Virgin) as Virgil, the cold unresponsive partner. And while the stunning Emmanuelle Chriqui (from television’s Entourage) shows up as Tasty D Lite, a wheelchair-bound stripper, it’s Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) who gets full frontal exposure as a nude cowboy. It’s all so damn quirky that by the time we meet up with the human torch longing for a cigarette while bursting into flames, the absurdity quota has long been filled.

John is a compulsive gambler whose only way to put a run of bad luck behind him is to get as far away from Vegas as a tank of gas will allow. He ends up in an insurance claims office. A bizarre set of circumstances (and all of this movie is bizarre) turns his request for a raise into an assignment to uncover insurance fraud – in Vegas. It’s the last place he wants to be. There is a story here and I would have loved to have seen it, but everything is so mired in cleverness that it has no chance to unfold.

I’m always disappointed when the potential for great narrative is marred by a need to be off-centre. Off-centre is good, but it has to be organic. When it becomes the goal, then it’s worse than being formulaic – it becomes a formula that congratulates itself for straying from form. It appears that alternative filmmaking now has a checklist and director Hue Rhodes hits every skewed point to ensure his place among the pantheon of indie darlings. The threat is that eventually indie will eat itself and the mundane will be crumbs left in the wake.

Saint John is a replica of every wannabe independent film that’s found its way to pay television. To give this film a theatrical run is either a producer’s gamble or a director’s jackpot.

Steve Buscemi is fine as John, even when the straight-to-camera performance takes on the style of a routine Vegas act. It’s Sarah Silverman who is curiously misplaced. I’m sad to say that the prolonged close-up shots turn her sassy prettiness into something less than I imagined. What is so damn cute on YouTube is lost on the big screen. Silverman’s stint as Jill, the adorable office hottie hiding beneath the innocent velour of yellow smiley faces while secretly engaging in rough bathroom-stall sex is pretty much a routine she’s built a career on. The romance between John and Jill might have provided the "heart" to these characters if their romance wasn’t established primarily on the phone miles apart from each other -- making this unlikely pairing even more unlikely.

Some are already touting Saint John as the refreshing reprieve amidst a winter of blockbusters and while many at the preview screening I attended seemed to be happily going along with the film’s pointless erratic flow, I was left to ponder just what was not working for me. Then it came to me. When Virgil tells John while driving aimlessly through the desert, “There is a saying in prison: When the cross-dressing skinhead doesn’t rape you and take your cigarettes, you don’t ask why.” That line pretty much sums up the movie for me. It’s not enough to be in prison, it’s not enough to be a cross-dresser, it’s not enough for the cross-dresser to be a skinhead (is that possible?) and it’s not even enough to be threatened with rape – but your cigarettes have to be at risk as well. Don’t ask why, because once you do, you’ll find it all adds up to nothing.