Down the toilet of life. (Leaving Las Vegas (DVD))

Member Name: joecooper

Product:	Leaving Las Vegas (DVD)
Date:	12/02/03 (189 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nicholas Cage., Elisabeth Shue.

Disadvantages: None.

At one end of the cinematic spectrum are those films that are, to quote Lesley Gore, all "sunshine, lollipops and rainbows". Disney tends to take care of this end of things for us. At the opposite end reside the darker movies that explore deeper emotions. Director Mike Figgis's 1995 film Leaving Las Vegas is stuffed to the gills with all the deeper darker emotions that you could ever ask for. It's a spellbinding journey down the toilet of life with two likeable, but self-destructive people. Leaving Las Vegas also delivers an unusual love story as it swishes around and down the porcelain bowl.

Toilet bowls of life and love stories aside, is it any good? In my opinion it's one of the best movies to be spawned by the dream factories of Hollywood in the 1990s. I'll tell you right now that it's getting five stars from me. But stick around for the ride as I run you through the flick!

*Meet Ben Sanderson - the story*

Ben Sanderson is a man with a terrible disease - alcoholism. It's not the sort of alcoholism that we normally see. It's not Aunt Cecilia with her one too many glasses of chardonnay at her regular social lunches. No. It's a full-blown alcoholism that's devouring Ben's life.

We're given a little taste of what it's like for Ben early in the film. We see Ben in a bank trying to sign and cash a cheque so that he can buy his much needed alcohol. Unfortunately, Ben's such a mess without the booze running through his system, that he can't keep his hand anywhere near still enough to sign his signature to the teller's satisfaction. He's sweating buckets and his hands are keeping a quick rhythm of their own. It's a pitiful scene.

When Ben manages to get some plonk down his neck, and is souped up enough to return to the bank, we catch a glimpse of what he may once of been before the alcoholism took him. He doesn't appear drunk. He appears rel
axed and affable.

However, any respite that Ben is feeling after his little victory at the bank is short lived when he gets the sack from his film industry job. His drinking has become all too apparent to his work colleagues and he's been deemed bad for business.

It appears that Ben's drinking was bad for business elsewhere as well. At some point along the line his wife and kids have left him. So sloshed is he on a permanent basis, he can't remember if they left because of his drinking, or if he started drinking because they left. He's not really sure.

The job was the last remaining fragment of a life before alcoholism for Ben. Without it he's set adrift, and fully succumbed by his drinking disease. With his severance pay in hand he plans to commit suicide, slowly. Ben decides that he's going to drink himself to death. To do so, he leaves his home in Los Angeles, and with a bottle in hand, he drives to the capital of sin, Las Vegas.

Once in Las Vegas, Ben implements his death-binge budget. He figures that it'll only take a few weeks to drink himself to death, and therefore he's got $200 to $300 a day to spend on liquor and the occasional prostitute. There's nothing else to spend the money on, especially since he's decided he's not going to eat.

Things are going according to Ben's plan until he picks up Sera (Elisabeth Shue) a streetwalking hooker. Sera somehow sees through Ben's masquerade as just another customer, and the two strike up a bond. In many ways, Sera and Ben are kindred spirits. Sera's got her own little self-destructive adventure happening courtesy of her sadistic pimp. The humiliating knife scars on her backside bear testimony.

With Sera in place, we're left to see whether either of the two characters can be pulled back from the abyss. They're both likeable souls, and we're hoping that Sera can pull the bottle away from Ben&#
39;s hand, and that Ben can then save Sera from the dreadful existence of a bottom of the barrel prostitute. Will a miracle occur? You'll have to watch and see.

*The acting*

From the brief synopsis above, the storyline can appear trite. However, on the screen, thanks to Cage and Shue, it works oh so well.

When you watch Nicholas Cage as Ben in Leaving Las Vegas you immediately think he should have won an Academy Award. Well, he did. Nicholas Cage did indeed win the Best Actor Award for Leaving Las Vegas. His portrayal of the alcoholic Ben Sanderson is simply brilliant. For those of you who only know of Cage's work from action adventure flicks such as Con Air and Face Off, do yourself a very big favour and see what he's really capable of. I say it all the time about actors and films, but Leaving Las Vegas is that film in Cage's career that will be his enduring masterpiece.

Elisabeth Shue proves that she's come a long way since Back To The Future. Normally she's typecast into 'nice girl' roles. As Sera the desperate prostitute, Shue proves that she's an actress and not just a pretty face. Her performance is flawless in Leaving Las Vegas. I'd like to see her given more quality roles such as this.

*Who's this film for?*

I'd put a 21+ rating on Leaving Las Vegas if I could. It's a savage film when it comes to playing with human emotions. The nudity, profanity and violence isn't particularly disturbing, but the concepts that the film deals with are. Bear in mind that the ride is emotionally rough before you put Leaving Las Vegas on.

*Adding to the poignancy*

Leaving Las Vegas is based on an autobiographical novel by a bloke named John O'Brien. Sadly, O'Brien never got to see his vision on the big screen. He committed suicide just weeks before the film rights were sold in 1994.

*Joe's final words*

If you lov
e a film that tugs at your emotions in unexpected ways, then Leaving Las Vegas will be a favorite of yours, as it is of mine. It?s one of the few flawless movies that I can remember.

As mentioned above, Leaving Las Vegas gets five stars. R.I.P. John O'Brien.

Thanks for reading.


~Joe

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