John (Steve Buscemi) is a marginally successful gambling addict. ("When I lived in Las Vegas, I had plenty of luck. Problem is, most of it was bad.") John decides to get out of Vegas, driving all night and landing in Albuquerque, where he takes a job as an insurance claim handler at Townsend Insurance, buys into the career path, and scratches the shit out of scratch tickets every night. He works opposite the cubicle of Jill (Sarah Silverman, fairly amusing in a role not too far outside her television-show persona), who decorates everything, including her fingernails, with yellow happy faces. Eventually, Steve asks for a promotion, his boss (Peter Dinklage, dynamic, clever) consents, and John is off to investigate a suspect auto accident outside of Las Vegas. But first he gives Jill "a good hair pulling," which results in an instant office bathroom copulation and a subsequent relationship. ("My pinky finger has a frown painted on it, and it's gonna stay there until you come home.")

Romany Malco is spot-on as Virgil, the calculating and aloof fraud investigator assigned to investigate the case with John. Buscemi plays the same hard-luck schlub he's played in every movie you can think of, only here he's slightly more disheveled, and in the scratch-ticket scenes he absolutely nails the sick, adrenaline-soaked mind of an addict in mid-fix. First-time writer/director Hue Rhodes (cofounder of the Kmart/Yahoo venture BlueLight.com!) is already drawing comparisons to the Coen brothers, but don't drink the punch. The absurdist aesthetic of Saint John of Las Vegas is more akin to, say, Miguel Arteta's The Good Girl than to The Big Lebowski. This is not knee-slapping humor, but laughs are frequent and solid enough to make Saint John a genuine pleasure. It's like comedy on Klonopin—drawn out and subtle, and who couldn't use that once in a while?