Leaving Las Vegas ★★★☆☆
Where grim meets glitzy and doesn’t bother asking for your opinion on either.
If you’ve ever thought that Las Vegas was the perfect place to lose all sense of dignity, you’d be half-right. Leaving Las Vegas doesn’t just drop its characters into the pit; it hands them a shovel and asks them to dig. And boy, do they dig.
Nicolas Cage stars as Ben Sanderson, a down-and-out Hollywood screenwriter who has made the bold decision to head to Las Vegas with one goal: to drink himself to death. Enter Sera (Elisabeth Shue), a prostitute with a heart that’s seen more wear and tear than the Vegas Strip itself. The two form a deeply dysfunctional bond—Ben promises Sera never to ask her to stop turning tricks, and Sera agrees to let Ben drink himself into oblivion without interference. It’s a love story only in the way that two sinking ships can technically call it a “relationship” when they crash into each other at sea.
On the surface, this is a film about alcoholism and self-destruction, but dig deeper (as Ben surely does) and you’ll find it’s really about human connection, or rather, the lack of it. Leaving Las Vegas explores the grim reality of addiction without the false hope of redemption arcs or moral lessons. It’s about acceptance—the kind where you don’t expect someone to change, even as they hurtle toward oblivion. If most films are about finding ways to live, this one is a masterclass in finding ways to die.
Mike Figgis’s direction is as raw as it comes, opting for handheld shots and guerrilla-style filming to match the film’s gritty content. The movie was shot in Super 16mm, which gives it an almost documentary feel. You can practically smell the stale booze and sweat emanating from the screen, making Vegas feel less like the city of lights and more like a fluorescent-lit purgatory. Figgis, who also composed the film’s melancholic jazz score, seems determined to remind us that beauty is fleeting and often found in the ugliest of places.
Nicolas Cage’s performance here is one of those wild moments where you can’t tell if he’s acting or just method-drinking his way through the movie. Cage fully embodies Ben’s alcoholic haze, mixing charisma with crumbling despair in a way that is both fascinating and horrifying. He’s a man already dead, waiting for his body to catch up. Elisabeth Shue is equally brilliant, offering Sera as a tragic figure who desperately wants to be loved for more than what she does. Together, their chemistry is haunting, like watching two ghosts trying to remember what it felt like to be alive.
At just under two hours, the film drags you through its mire at a deliberate pace. And that’s the point—you’re not meant to escape from the suffocating sadness of it all. There’s no rush to the bottom of Ben’s bottle; every scene feels like a lingering final breath. This slow burn suits the film’s existential tone but does risk exhausting viewers who expect more narrative propulsion. The structure is episodic, tracking Ben’s decline and Sera’s futile hope that love—or something like it—can stop his inevitable descent.
Watching Leaving Las Vegas is like watching someone else’s slow-motion car crash, except you’ve got a strange feeling that you understand why they didn’t bother hitting the brakes. It’s hard not to see a reflection of our collective existential dread in Ben’s journey. Maybe you don’t need to be a falling-apart alcoholic to get it—anyone who’s ever felt like checking out of life, even momentarily, will see something familiar here. The film doesn’t offer catharsis, but it doesn’t need to. Sometimes, all you can do is watch.
This is not a movie for a casual Friday night. It’s for the cinema masochists, the ones who appreciate a bit of beautifully orchestrated despair with their popcorn. It’s arthouse grit, not Hollywood gloss. If you’re looking for redemption, look elsewhere. If you want a film that stares hopelessness dead in the eye and dares you to blink, then Leaving Las Vegas might just be your kind of emotional punishment. A grueling watch, but one that’s oddly hypnotic in its honesty.
