Leaving Las Vegas [Blu-ray] | DVD Review

In a triumph of style and tone, the almost unbearable grimness of the story in Mike Figgis’s Oscar-winning dramedy Leaving Las Vegas is mitigated by the strokes of comic ingenuity that polish off the surface of this mainstream nineties hit.

Before his career would descend to straight-to-DVD flaming-skulls-and-conspiracy-theories territory, Nicolas Cage was one of the most bankable names in Hollywood, and none of his films attests to this better than his surprisingly fresh and relevant star turn in Mike Figgis’s Leaving Las Vegas. This is the kind of film which on paper one almost dreads seeing—it is a story of addiction, of failed romance and of missed opportunity, and not by turns but all at once. All of which is to say that, on paper at least, Leaving Las Vegas seems to possess all the lightness and grace of bowling ball, and it is precisely the way in which the film leverages the emotional heaviness of its subject matter that it succeeds most. And it’s not just stock gestures at comic relief padding the roaring rivulets of bathos here and there, but fundamentally of a part with the film itself: from the very beginning, the viewer is given to understand that there will actually be a plenty of laughs to go around, and it is precisely that dynamic—the way in which one laughs and then questions whether one should, after all, be laughing—that spares the film from the serious-naturalistic-drama-with-plenty-of-commercial-appeal dustbin, and more.

The story is actually gossamer-thin—which is another of the film’s strengths, the way that it manages to keep one engaged for all of two hours. Meet failed screenwriter Ben (who else but Nicolas Cage?). He is an alcoholic, and he’s lost his family and just about everything else, so naturally he’s heading to Las Vegas. Meet Sera (Elisabeth Shue). She is basically the Dickensian archetype of whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, complete with (inexplicably) Siberian pimp (it’s Las Vegas, all things considered . . .). At any rate, they are going to fall in love. But what will happen when Ben is forced to choose between his booze and his belle? So it goes without saying that a great deal of it is predictable, but the brilliance of the execution is that the film almost makes the argument, just beneath the requisite surface gloss, that being predictable doesn’t translate always into being formulaic—just mostly.

Take, for instance, the name of the place where Ben is staying: The Whole Year Inn. Say that to yourself for a little while. At one point, a drunken Ben reads it as, you guessed it, The Hole You’re In. It’s these deft little touches that make the material not only bearable, but guiltily enjoyable—and the way it melds and warps the pathology of the viewer, who sits there trying fecklessly to square his guilt with his enjoyment, is where the film really takes off. The performances by Cage and Shue are probably the finest in either’s career, and they’re good precisely because they never seem particularly overwrought in the way that, say, such known quantities as Al Pacino or Judi Dench often might, all of which is in keeping with what one might term the film’s unbearable lightness of tone.

It’s not your typical love triangle, to be sure, but it is certainly the (crowning) gem in Figgis’s filmography before and since, which is composed mostly of thoroughly mediocre audience-friendly genre flicks. The one exception is the boldly experimental Timecode, but that ended up being much more of a novelty than it had any right to be. The film can’t really avoid certain things, like the requisite deathbed sequence, and one supposes such are the burdens of genre films, but for the most part Leaving Las Vegas wears its corporate drag well—and provides a successful template for addressing serious issues with panache.

The Blu-ray edition has been given the high-definition treatment and looks as if it had been shot yesterday, so on that front there are no quibbles. But that’s just about the only front where there are no quibbles, because on just about every other front there’s not much to recommend this particular release—not only does it not have a commentary track, it doesn’t even come with the original trailer. Which is disappointing because with 50gb of storage, one imagines a lot could be done to make it worth buying. As it is, the restoration may be all the recommendation you need, if you’re a fan of the film, but there’s little else to entertain you outside of the film itself, so be aware.

A disappointing release of a popular stateside classic from the nineties that still retains all of the charms that made it matter in the first place, the film still can’t shake the weightiness of its subject matter. Nevertheless, Figgis does an admirable job of providing a constant comic ballast with a lightness of tone that seems almost untutored but is very difficult to replicate.

Movie rating – 3.5

Disc Rating – 2.5