Leaving Las Vegas (1995) * *

Directed by:  Mike Figgis

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, Julian Sands

Movies about self-destructive characters are tricky.     If done right, they are fascinating.    If not, then we feel like sadists watching a man destroy himself.     Leaving Las Vegas, despite its Oscar-winning performance from Nicolas Cage, is in the latter category.     There is only so much of this we can watch.     The biggest flaw is that Ben and Sera, played by Cage and Shue, are nice people, if not fully developed, and we don't want to see these bad things happening to them. 

There are alcoholics and then there is Ben Sanderson, who at times can barely function without having a drink.     He shakes so bad at one point that he can't even sign his name to endorse a check.    He was once a writer and became a literary agent, but he is fired and given a severance check.     His plan is to move to Las Vegas and drink himself to death.     We never see him act as joyously as he does in the film's opening scene as he enthusiastically dances while he fills his shopping cart with booze.      Why is he an alcoholic?   Even he doesn't know for sure.     He once had a family, but they are long gone.     "Maybe they left because I drank or maybe I drank because they left,"  he says at one point.     By then, it doesn't really matter.

Ben travels to Vegas, where he encounters a hooker named Sera by chance.     He nearly runs her over, but after seeing her, he seeks her out the next night.     Upon finding her, he pays her $500 for sex, but not much sex is accomplished.     Instead, they spend the night talking in his hotel room until he passes out.     It is then that Sera becomes hooked on Ben, much like he is hooked on booze.    She suggests he move in with her.     He agrees with one caveat:  "You are never to ask me to stop drinking."    Even if she ever did ask, he is too far gone to be able to.     

Sera senses the good in Ben, even romanticizing him to an extent, even through the DTs and sickness.     It's amazing Ben can even stand up as we watch him pound drink after drink, but somehow he soldiers on toward his date with death.     We know very little about him, although we can sense he is intelligent and at times charming.      Yet, do we care enough?     We sense Sera's intelligence and humanity.      She is very attractive, but doesn't come off as hard enough or wise enough to handle the streets.     We hope she would re-enroll in college somewhere.  Shue received an Oscar nomination for her role, but I couldn't fully buy in to her character.      Cage, however, has the look and aura of someone resigned to his fate.     It is well done and we sympathize as much as the film lets us.

I saw the film first in 1996 and then again recently.    Both times, I was ambivalent towards it.     We see two people in a doomed relationship who continue to sink further into sad behavior.      Director Mike Figgis' film has the look and feel of film noir here.    He reportedly had to film certain scenes in one take due to lack of film permits.     I can't say Leaving Las Vegas was poorly conceived or acted.    In the end, however, I wasn't emotionally invested enough to be moved by the outcome.