Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
In some ways a powerful movie, and very sad. It has earned a reputation for its relentlessness—the sex and the drinking both—and for the acting by both main actors, Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue.
The best of this is both harrowing (the drinking is not usually fun stuff, but chugging and feeling sick stuff) and moving. There is the one main course of the main character Ben's decline as he drinks himself to death. This is at first not taken as a literal fact, but you see Ben's true (and unexplained) despondency never waver.
There is also the growing relationship between Ben and the prostitute, Sera, who is more charming and undamaged than a woman in her role would probably be. (Who knows?) What starts off as a movie cliché of the whore who is actually really sweet and has a heart of gold turns into an even more unlikely girlfriend with the ability to watch her new man slowly commit suicide.
But don't let reality temper your enjoyment of this downer mess. It is quite a beautiful story for the simple fact that it's so extreme, and in this outlandish hellish zone (in glittering Las Vegas) two people find a kind of true love. That's worth making a hundred movies about.
No, I bought into the story despite its obvious hooks and embellishments and playing with sensation for the audience's sake (it's a very calculated movie at times). I liked it for those things, too, in a way, even if irritated by the lack of originality in treating these really common themes. What keeps the movie from quite being a classic, or a cult masterpiece (it has strains of both possibilities) is its pace. There are times when it just gets slow. I don't think it's from the style—a slow movie that creates an interesting space and lets you inhabit it and feel it is a great movie.
Instead I think this lingers and runs out of plot halfway through. We don't quite know the end at the midpoint, but we know what will happen (or not happen) for close to an hour more. The subplot of a Russian pimp and his pursuers is gladly ditched by now, improbable and forced as it was. We get the best of the movie when we have just Cage and Shue.
And they work. They have chemistry. They show on screen intelligence for each other, and Cage in particular gives his best performance—or best serious performance, at least (he pulls off a couple brilliant quirky comic roles elsewhere). Shue I don't know—I like her a lot here as a complement to Cage, but she never convinced me. Too nicely pretty, too easygoing, too easily duped into bad situations.
But see this if you have any inclination at all. It's different enough to sustain and emotionally satisfying enough to keep you thinking afterward.
In some ways a powerful movie, and very sad. It has earned a reputation for its relentlessness—the sex and the drinking both—and for the acting by both main actors, Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue.
The best of this is both harrowing (the drinking is not usually fun stuff, but chugging and feeling sick stuff) and moving. There is the one main course of the main character Ben's decline as he drinks himself to death. This is at first not taken as a literal fact, but you see Ben's true (and unexplained) despondency never waver.
There is also the growing relationship between Ben and the prostitute, Sera, who is more charming and undamaged than a woman in her role would probably be. (Who knows?) What starts off as a movie cliché of the whore who is actually really sweet and has a heart of gold turns into an even more unlikely girlfriend with the ability to watch her new man slowly commit suicide.
But don't let reality temper your enjoyment of this downer mess. It is quite a beautiful story for the simple fact that it's so extreme, and in this outlandish hellish zone (in glittering Las Vegas) two people find a kind of true love. That's worth making a hundred movies about.
No, I bought into the story despite its obvious hooks and embellishments and playing with sensation for the audience's sake (it's a very calculated movie at times). I liked it for those things, too, in a way, even if irritated by the lack of originality in treating these really common themes. What keeps the movie from quite being a classic, or a cult masterpiece (it has strains of both possibilities) is its pace. There are times when it just gets slow. I don't think it's from the style—a slow movie that creates an interesting space and lets you inhabit it and feel it is a great movie.
Instead I think this lingers and runs out of plot halfway through. We don't quite know the end at the midpoint, but we know what will happen (or not happen) for close to an hour more. The subplot of a Russian pimp and his pursuers is gladly ditched by now, improbable and forced as it was. We get the best of the movie when we have just Cage and Shue.
And they work. They have chemistry. They show on screen intelligence for each other, and Cage in particular gives his best performance—or best serious performance, at least (he pulls off a couple brilliant quirky comic roles elsewhere). Shue I don't know—I like her a lot here as a complement to Cage, but she never convinced me. Too nicely pretty, too easygoing, too easily duped into bad situations.
But see this if you have any inclination at all. It's different enough to sustain and emotionally satisfying enough to keep you thinking afterward.