Based on a book by John O’Brien, Leaving Las Vegas isn’t typical Hollywood fare. Most love stories are relentless in their optimism, and happy ending is mandatory. Therefore, it’s very unusual when a romance develops and stays entangled in the dark realms of the human psyche as seen in Leaving Las Vegas. This is a motion picture about the power and helplessness of love. Despite what some would have us believe, love doesn’t always conquer all, and wipe away life’s deepest troubles.
Leaving Las Vegas tells the story of Ben (Nicolas Cage), an unapologetic drunk, and Sera (Elisabeth Shue), a been-there-seen-it-all prostitute. After Ben loses his job as a movie executive in LA, he takes the money he has left and heads to Vegas. He’s not going there for the glamour, glitz or gambling. His intentions are much more certain: take a room in a flea-bag motel, buy as much booze as he can afford, and drink himself to death. He estimates his mission should take only a few weeks. However, even as Ben’s body craves alcohol, he finds he needs companionship. So, when he sees Sera walking the streets, he offers her $500 for an hour. As it turns out, the terribly lonely Ben needs a good listener, more than he needs sex. Thus begins the relationship at the film’s core.
Under the thumb of a brutish Latvian pimp named Yuri (Julian Sands) Sera has her own set of issues. But perhaps it’s a mutual desire to escape their present circumstances that causes them to bond rather quickly. It’s more than a friendship, but what exactly? Is this a traditional, if grim, romance? Not quite. These are two deeply scarred individuals who can’t accept the slightest of criticisms (no matter that they might be constructive), let alone make any behavioral changes to their lives. Certainly marriage is out of the question, and their behavior makes a long term relationship unlikely.
What makes Leaving Las Vegas so haunting is Ben and Sera’s willingness to love each other unconditionally. Their relationship blossoms amidst a backdrop of utter desperation and pain. Ben’s only appeal to Sera is that she never try to stop him from drinking. As a result, the audience knows this will be short-lived. We understand when Sera says, “We both realized that we didn’t have that much time. I accepted him as he was and didn’t expect him to change. He needed me. I loved him — I really loved him.”
Leaving Las Vegas is essentially a two-character story; nearly every scene is built around Ben, Sera, or (more frequently) both. There’s an undeniable honesty at the heart of Cage’s tortured performance and Shue’s amazingly well done turn that gives the film an underlying intensity. The final scene is particularly moving. The audience is left to wonder what exactly Ben has done with his life. Is this a basically good man who has thrown it all away due to an unconquerable disease? Or is he just a lout, who draws sera into his poisonous circle? It’s a question that might not be answerable.
Director Mike Figgis avoids using Leaving Las Vegas as a moralizing tool, and instead has created an exceptional dual character study. This is a film that takes the audience on a dark, disturbing ride that wont soon be forgotten.
The Blu-ray has been released in its theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 in a 1080p transfer. A bit erratic, the film has always had a grainy texture, but many sequences here seem to have been smoothed (faces aren’t waxy), but it doesn’t look the way I remember it in the theater. However, grain can be seen in other sequences so it seems very inconsistent. Color saturation levels are good, and skin tones are realistic. Black levels range from poor, with crushed blacks, to very good. Sharpness is mediocre at best, with a definite lack of detail in most of the images.
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix is much better than the video quality. The music for the film, a mixture of Mike Figgis’ original score with a host of familiar pop songs, showcases fine fidelity and a nice spread through the front and rear soundstage. There aren’t a lot of ambient sounds added to the mix, but what’s here is adequate. Dialogue has been well recorded and resides firmly in the center channel.
The only special feature included here is the Trailer in HD.
