Review of Leaving Las Vegas (1995) by Alvin Y — 06 Apr 2012

Leaving Las Vegas, Great Movies.

Leaving Las Vegas is a honest, painful, sad, heartbreaking, emotional, realistic, and a great great film. This is I believe, one of few movies that I realize why movies are a lot of meaning in my life, and I mean it. The subject of alcoholism in this movie is just perfectly accurate that every moment in the film is truly believable. Nicolas Cage's best and only great performance of his career that won him a best actor Oscar, tells us this character is prepared to die but all in all, there's more redemption and forgiveness to this character. Elizabeth Shue's Sara is a complete true character as well. She is mostly the reason or should we say, the influence to Ben on maybe drinking more wine or being a much nicer person.

While the film is just heartbreaking, there are times that the film becomes melancholy. We cry, laugh, and care to these people more. Using a minimal and low-key direction/shots, the movie becomes more like an indie style, the director cares about whether Ben and Sara will fall in love or have sex after, but the truth is, whether they will have a good ending each. And every scene shown in LLV, make us feel not to drink alcohol ever again, or makes you not to have sex with a hooker, it's just brilliant.

Once again, at the time we want to feel calm and ease just a moment, here is a film to get us to our mood. Maybe I'm enough watching this for the 2nd time. Cage and Shue's character/performances are just irresistible and magnificent that you may never look back at the poster of the film ever again. I know I want to tell more things to this beautiful film but let's end this now. Whoever you are, a drinker, a hooker, or someone feeling bored, here is a film for you. And for the last time, I like it, I like the performances, and I think it's one of the best films of the year (1995), Big big huge enthusiastic high thumbs up for me. This is gonna be on my top 100 list if I will make one.