What’s this all about?
An alcoholic screenwriter loses his job in L.A., and takes his severance pay to Las Vegas, intent on drinking himself to death. He’s planned out his expenses, when and how to sell things, like his car, to fund his non-stop binge, and he’s ready to die.
Along the way he meets a prostitute, and they inexplicably fall in love. He demonstrably makes her life worse in every way, until they eventually part ways, despite their bizarre and undefined “love”.
Eventually, his plan succeeds.
This movie was nominated for three Oscars, and our man, Nick, won the Best Actor Oscar for his role. This must be a pretty great movie, huh?
Read on.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Ben,” a late-stage alcoholic jerk, who has pissed away his career, his wife, and his son in unspecified ways, and is determined to leave the world doing what he does best. Getting wasted and wrecking shit.
Honestly, Nick probably deserved the Oscar, here. His character is insufferable, obnoxious, and apathetic, and Nick delivers a dead-nuts perfect performance. He looks like he’s about to die throughout the movie, and acts just like real addicts act.
The character has absolutely zero redeeming qualities, and that’s how Nick plays him.
Who else is in this one?
The number of famous people in this one is a little mind-blowing. If I forget to list one of your favorites, it’s probably because fatigue was setting in from all the typing.
Elisabeth Shue plays the prostitute “Sera”, who, for some reason, takes Ben in and cares for him while he helps destroy her life. Elisabeth Shue was nominated for “Best Actress” for this. She should have won.
This is another case of a brilliant portrayal of an absolutely dismal character.
Richard Lewis (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Stephen Weber (Wings) play Hollywood associates of Nick, whom he annoys at a restaurant, before moving on to annoy Valerie Gorlino (Hot Shots 1 & 2).
Carey Lowell (Who played ADA Jamie Ross for 50 episodes of Law & Order) plays a bank teller in two completely unnecessary scenes.
French Stewart (Hollywood Squares, maybe?) plays one of Sera’s customers. Fortunately he has no lines.
R. Lee Ermey (The drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket) plays a convention-goer who does not wish to pay for sex with Elisabeth Shue.
Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order SVU) plays a non-Elisabeth Shue prostitute.
Laurie Metcalf (Aunt Jackie from Rosanne) and David Brisbin (Uncle Ben from Hey, Dude!) play a married couple who are the landlords at Elisabeth Shue’s fancy apartment. Honestly, if they just made a movie about these two, and their wacky tenants, I’d watch it. It could be like a reboot of The Ropers, only funny.
Shawnee Smith (The Shining) plays a crazy lady (like she always does) who gets Nick in trouble in a bar run by Julian Lennon (yes, that Julian Lennon).
Xander Berkeley (Shanghai Noon and about a thousand other things) plays an asshole cabbie, and Lou Rawls (the R&B singer who Frank Sinatra thought was the coolest) plays a friendlier cabbie.
Did you see that?
This movie features a lot of taxis in various scenes. Every single one of them has an advertisement on top for “Red Mullet,” with the picture of a performer on them. This was so ubiquitous that I had to look it up.
Apparently, the “performer” featured in the ads is actually Mike Figgis. He was the director of this movie. He directed a lot of other things, too. You almost certainly haven’t seen any of them (except for a single episode of The Sopranos).
He also wrote the vast majority of the music in this film, and even though it’s background music, put it on the soundtrack album. This background music is played too loud in the movie’s mix, and at places where it really doesn’t belong. It’s bland 90’s navel-gazing jazz without any tension or soul.
From watching this one (by far his best known) movie, I feel like Figgis is one of those pretentious Hollywood types who likes to talk about “the human condition” while driving a BMW. Mike Figgis seems like the kind of guy who smells his own farts, then compliments the “earth undertones”.
As a side note, the guy who wrote the novel that this was based on killed himself shortly after Figgis started production on this film. I have to assume it was because Figgis showed him some of the dailies. Or made him listen to his “original music”. -Michael
Do you remember the soda commercials of the 80’s where people would slam a glass bottle of soda? Just throw your head back and glug as fast as you can!
Well Nic did this to a bottle of booze at the bottom of a swimming pool. Yes, I did say the bottom, completely under water. And before you think it was just movie effects, you could clearly see his adam’s apple chugging. I have no clue how one could do this without taking in water through their nose. I’m completely flabbergasted and amazed. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
As I mentioned before, Nick’s acting in this is really good throughout the movie. There’s a scene in which he’s drunkenly playing blackjack along with Elisabeth Shue at a Vegas table, when he suddenly snaps, pushes over a waitress and flips the card table.
I’ve had some alcoholic friends.
This was spot-on. -Michael
Michael is right here, Nick absolutely nailed this performance start to finish. Picking his best scene is really more just picking the most entertaining bit for yourself.
For me, I probably most enjoyed the scenes where he first came across Elisabeth Shue or almost hit her with his car while running a red light, obviously drunk. Then following up with the scene where he actually successfully picked her up to get her to come back to his hotel room with him. He wasn’t as drunk as in the rest of the movie and was doing the slightly more charming version of a drunken asshole. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
There isn’t an especially weak point in Cage’s performance, here. The only one that stands out is a scene in which Elisabeth Shue has taken him to the mall (because he threw all of his clothes away to fit more booze in his suitcase, and bled all over the one shirt that she bought him). They are having a drink at the food court when he gives Shue a pair of earrings as a gift. He suggests that she should wear just one of them so that she can feel it pressing against her while her customers have sex with her.
It seemed like a needless and mean scene that was a little out of character. One of the consistent themes in the relationship was that both characters accepted the flawed nature of the other.
I blame the writer/director for this more than I do Cage. I can’t think how his acting alone could have saved the scene. -Michael
Again, it’s impossible to rank his various scenes as they were all equal. So again, I’m going to go with personal preference.
I know Michael said this was his best scene, and maybe I had fewer alcoholic friends in my life, but I found the scene in the casino where he flips the table a bit over the top. I even took it back to rewatch it to see if I could figure out the motivation, but there wasn’t any. It’s was just a drunken over the top reaction. I saw no point to the scene, he had already thoroughly shown his character. -Sarah
How was the movie?
Since I was in High School, I’ve heard what a great movie Leaving Las Vegas was. Honestly, I may have confused it with Honeymoon in Vegas, which I had also not seen before this marathon.
I expected good things here.
This movie is terrible. It doesn’t even rise into “bad” territory. It’s another “story” in which nothing really happens, and life is just shitty for some irredeemable characters.
I took no meaning or message from this film.
The acting is good; borderline amazing, especially from Cage and Shue, but the characters are one dimensional. Cage is an alcoholic who wants to drink himself to death, and does. Shue is a prostitute who seems drawn to men who do nothing but make her life worse. In the end, both characters remain unchanged (except for the fact that Cage is dead) and have learned nothing.
Arguably this is more realistic than a story about character growth and ultimate redemption. A movie about your mailman delivering you mail would also be very realistic, but it wouldn’t be interesting either.
This film is an exercise in directorial hubris; a movie made primarily to shock with it’s “unflinching realism” but that fails to tell an actual story. -Michael
I also had not actually seen this movie till now, but had heard all the hype and was looking forward to seeing what it was all about.
I am so disappointed. Michael hates movies about nothing, where you just watch some characters exist for a bit. I can enjoy these, but not this one.
These characters have no depth and no motivation. I spent the entire movie waiting for some nugget of information that would give me some backstory to explain why they make the choices they make, and it just doesn’t come. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it?
I did not like this film. If you’re thinking of watching it, just watch Honeymoon in Vegas instead. It has all the Nick Cage, and all the Vegas, with none of the Elisabeth Shue getting sodomized. -Michael
No, I didn’t. I can appreciate how fantastic the acting was. But the movie was not entertaining. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
It’s free on Tubi.
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