Can't say I expected to open with two movies from 1995, both of which center around the dangers of alcoholism. This better not be a forewarning of some kind.
Leaving Las Vegas is an interesting one to me because it clearly shouldn't work, right? From top to bottom, everything about this premise comes off as tired and cliched. I mean, the two main characters are literally a struggling writer and a hooker with a heart of gold, possibly the two most overdone archetypes in all of fiction. And the idea that this pair of broken souls might bond over their trauma is so trite and implausible that I actually feel slightly ashamed at the thought of falling for it.
But fall for it I did, for reasons you could probably guess. Mike Figgis's strange direction, from the unusual soundtrack to the use of 16mm film (which causes everything to seem that much more intimate and real), is part of the reason, as is my affinity for a good trashy Vegas aesthetic. But, predictably, it's the leads that make it all work. Cage and Shue are plainly playing pathetic characters, and yet they provide such vulnerability and subversive warmth (and I think it helps that both of them are acting slightly against type here) that you can actually start to understand why these individuals might come to love and accept one another. In a bizarre way, it's as beautiful as it is bleak.
Grade: A-
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