Dir. Mike Figgis, US, 1995, 113 mins
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, Julian Sands
Review by Colin Dibben
Ben (Cage) is a Hollywood screenwriter and a severe alcoholic. When he is fired, he makes the somewhat quixotic decision to intentionally drink himself to death over a month in Las Vegas.
In Las Vegas, he meets Sera (Shue), a sex worker with an abusive Latvian pimp, Yuri (Sands). Sera works the casinos, picking up punters, largely conventioneers. When Yuri is taken out of the picture, Sera and Ben start a desperate sort of relationship, with her looking after him as he drinks himself to death and a sexual component on the very far horizon.
There are some nice concepts and moments here, as well as several classic Cage-isms, by which I mean moments in which the Great Man looks utterly unhinged. My favourite Cage-ism is the coup de grace in the sequence where he wakes up with the shakes, as Sera is making dinner. He stumbles to the fridge, takes 2 litres of vodka into the shower, then turns up later at the dinner table looking like a smiley zombie and says manically “I think I’m ready for some rice now”.
The fatal luck that sticks to both Ben and Sera and the notion of an almost existential decision to choose to drink yourself to death are interesting. These may have come from Figgis’ viewing of John Huston’s 1984 film Under the Volcano – one of the few influences on Leaving Las Vegas that he mentions in a recent BFI interview, on top of the source fictional memoir by John O’ Brien.
Otherwise, this is the worst kind of Hollyweird phoniness: luvvies getting gritty, doing their research and being intense as they get deep inside their characters, overpaid actors essentially punching down at working stiffs and other losers. Punching down by missing something about these characters: they are not reducible to their suicidal decisions or their need for care and love at all costs. But that is all we see of them in Shue and Cage: physical behaviours and mannerisms that only allude to that.
Cage always pulls something watchable out of the hat. Here he looks and acts like a wasted angel. I counted 2 episodes of the shakes and one vomiting session; thankfully we don’t see Ben shit himself. Shue’s Sera hits plausible notes: flirty then hard as nails with punters, needy and confessional and caring with Ben. The less said about Sands’ Yuri the better.
You can’t make assumptions about Sera’s background, but it is odd that she appears to be narrating her love story, in a very confessional mode, to an analyst. How credible is that? On the other hand, it says everything about the film. We are not in the dirty realist territory of Willy Vlautin (his books have made 2 great films) or in the garrulous madcap worlds of a John Cassavetes movie. The enslaved sex worker has that most Hollywood of accessories – an analyst!
In general, the dialogue is very crafted and too often on the nose. The sexual horizon event makes sense for a film script if not real life. More improvisation around the dialogue would definitely have made a wilder film.
Leaving Las Vegas was filmed on gritty 16mm, so there is only so much a 4K restoration can do in terms of resolution. The colours are nice, however. The steamy, jazzy soundtrack with Sting crooning ages the film quite a lot and hits the same cool, dissipated note over and over again.
I think you have to enjoy this the way you would a Douglas Sirk melodrama from the 1950s. But Leaving Las Vegas is pure Hollywood sentimentality dressed up as real life. Unlike the Sirk films, this lives or dies on its credibility. It screams out that it is realistic, sincere, one from the heart. And yet it looks like more of the same: overpaid, overacting actors – worse, overacting because they have researched their parts! – and crew turning life into clichés.
Extras include:
- New audio commentary with Mike Figgis
- Mike Figgis documentary ‘The Shoot’
The Leaving Las Vegas 4K restoration is out in 2 versions: a 2-disc 4K UHD set which includes both a UHD and a Blu-ray disc and a 20-page booklet; or a Blu-ray disc with a 20-page booklet.
About the Author
