Leaving Las Vegas Reviews

Easily one of the most boring movies i have ever encountered, it was literally like torture, i wasn't able to look at my computer screen for an entire hour, but i had to force myself into it so that i can review it, but i already regret doing that, because writing this makes me bored.

It's a story about a drunk lonely middle-aged man played by Nicloas cage, which isn't really a problem cause he fit into that role very well, and i don't know if i'm complimenting him or offending him with that, but i never respected Nicloas cage as an actor, but i felt ok about this role, i mean i wasn't impressed or anything like what people are saying but the casting was the best thing about this movie.

The story is really, really boring, Ben Sanderson (played by cage) loses his job, and his wife divorce him, so he decide to move to las vegas and drink himself to death, that's his entire plan, he's an alcoholic who can't even have a normal conversation without drinking, he meets a hooker in las vegas, and they start an awkward relationship, and it's all depend on whether or not you can relate to him, because if you didn't (like me) you'd be bored and out of your mind the entire time, because nothing can help you in making the movie interesting, the dialog was corny, the story is really slow, and nothing happens the entire time, but if you can relate to it, then you might have a good time.

But i don't see how anyone can relate to such a character, specially when there isn't anything in the movie that explain nick cage behavior, i mean he was drunk and borrowing money from friends from the very beginning of the movie, so you have no background as why is this happening, and then comes the hooker (Sera) who just want a meaningless relationship with a dude for no obvious reason, so if you think that you will relate to her, you can't, because there wasn't a proper introduction to that character, even weirder that she had a friend that used to sexually abuse her and she stayed with him for along time, so whatever people saw in this movie, i failed to see, and i was about to shut it down but i didn't because i wanted to write this.

You know, I’m no stranger to depressing material, but Leaving Las Vegas is emotionally brutal, a masterpiece perhaps but absolutely devastating. It accepts that these two people will not wind up together and Nicolas Cage’s alcoholic writer will more than likely drink himself to death, and proceeds from there. When your central romantic triangle is a drunken writer, a prostitute and enough booze to fill the Pacific Ocean, we are not in uplifting territory here.

What I appreciated the most about Leaving Las Vegas was that it didn’t condemn or pander to its two central characters, rather it just took a step back and observed them in very minute and intimate detail. Writer/director/composer Mike Figgis pulls no punches in any of these respects. The moody and evocative score hammers home the point that these two needy, damaged people are only going to have the briefest piece of happiness together, they’re doomed, there is no escape here. And a scene early in their romance (if that’s even the correct wording for it) details this point explicitly. He will not ask her to stop being a hooker, she will not ask him to stop drinking, and they begrudgingly agree to this strange compromise.

It pull this moment into a wider focus, it feeds into the film’s larger scope of a hard look at dependency. Not only is she dependent on being a hooker for whatever strange reason, but she’s dependent on the drama he creates in her life, and that he’s a bigger mess than she is. He knows he’ll need a handler for his eventual drunken stupors and outbursts, and they do have a strangely sympathetic and empathetic connection to each other, so why not go along for this ride before he eventual kills himself with drink. They depend on the stability the other brings so that they can engage in their reckless behavior without fear of judgment. Their dependency exceeds beyond their obvious vices and soon becomes each other.

None of this would have been remotely watchable without the blistering work from Cage and Elisabeth Shue in the central roles. It’s easy to forget just how great an actor Cage can be nowadays since he’s devolved into National Treasure and campy work in films like Seasons of the Witch. There is none of that here, Cage is best in roles that allow him to be neurotic and twitchy, he can never be a normal person. Las Vegas gives him a role that he can fill in with his tics and odd bits of business, but Cage lets us forget that there is a human being slowly decaying before us. And Shue has never shown more depth of feeling or range as she has here. It’s one hell of a take on the hooker with a heart of gold trope, never really cracking entirely outside of cynicism or world-weariness that the character lives with day-to-day, but desperately trying to find a bit of happiness in her bleak life. It’s a shame that Shue can’t seem to find another film role as rich as this one and seems to have disappeared once more.

Leaving Las Vegas does possess a ragged charm, like its two central characters, but it’s tough stuff. It’s darkly charismatic, that’s probably the best description of it that I can summon up. It’s worth watching for certain, but don’t come to it expecting the typical Hollywood uplift and happy ending. There is no balm for any wounds here, just a good hard, unflinching look at dependency and a severely deranged romantic coupling.

As with most american movies entered into the romance genre, especially in the last twenty years, "Leaving Las Vegas" pursued for the foreground the complicity of the audience, involving them in its plot, either through the peculiarities of characters, or through force situations to advance the story, have some type of development.
In this movie there are two peculiarities. In particular I found it impossible to believe in the interpretation of alcoholic dying Nicolas Cage (who, it is true, I could only stand in "Raising Arizona"). After his encounter with the prostitute, the similarities with "9 1 / 2 weeks" or "Pretty Woman" are becoming more evident, flooding of "clichés" the love story with a look ever closer to the video clip.
To finish decorating it, the protagonist dies in the moment you get your first orgasm with her long-suffering lover. Mayor fib is not possible. ¿"Leaving Las Vegas"? too much noise for so little and, worse, misleading results.

brilliantly acted by both Shue & Cage - outstanding infact. Not a light hearted film and not easy going but great all the same.

My favorite aspect of this movie is the fact that it was never fully explored why Nick Cage's character wanted to off himself via alcoholism. The viewer is almost forced to come into the character's life with the same info that Elizabeth Shue's character & get to know him from that vantage point. It's a reminder that, many times, the addictions of those who are addicted tend to become bigger than whatever got them addicted in the first place. And instead of being analyzed or even understood, sometimes all they need is to be approached, from the very beginning with a caring & accepting face.

The roles Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue played in Leaving Las Vegas were outstanding but the story itself left me wondering by movies end what the point of it all was. Yeah I get the struggle of each individual character and solace they found in each other but its gratuitous nature did not justify two hours of nothing more than their hardships.