Stability should never be under-rated. Having the basics in life like a place to call home, regular meals, a job, a family, love, commitment, a lawn. These are all things the average person might take for granted. Perhaps if you lose one or two of these things, life gets a little harder, but what would happen if they all disappeared one by one? Vegas: Based on a True Story, a film by director Amir Naderi, tells a compelling story about a vegas family of 3 struggling to stay out of the casinos and maintain the precarious balance of their lives.

He’s a used tire salesman, she’s a waitress, and their 12 year old son is just your average good kid. When a marine shows up at their modest home claiming to have grown up there, they welcome him in and invite him to stay for dinner. When he continues to show up he plants seeds of drama. Playing off of the couples past gambling addictions, and human nature, a sad true story unravels.

Naderi does a fantastic job of psychologically showing the slow decline of a family barely attempting to keep it together. Hope is what keeps you feeding the slot machines, and hope is what keeps all rational thinking at bay. Maybe all it will take is that final pull on the handle….and the audience finds itself investing hope and playing along just one more time.

Words by Barbie Brady, red carpet photos by Dustin Downing