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Leaving Las Vegas

1995

Mike Figgis

Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, Julian Sands, Richard Lewis ...

7.2

56,444

Romance. Drama Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage), a hard-core alcoholic, drives to Las Vegas after being fired from his film production job and divesting himself of all possessions. He plans to drink himself to death within four weeks. He meets Sera (Elisabeth Shue), a prostitute; they fall in love and he moves in with her. Each pledges not to try to change the other's chosen destiny, and they carry on a romance over Ben's last weeks.

	Author	Review
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"A uniquely hypnotic and haunting love story (...) You can't take your eyes off these actors. (...) Cage and Shue make it something more visceral and immediate: a cry from the heart."	POS
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"A small, searing film (...) a character study, pitilessly well observed and intimately familiar with its terrain. (...) 'Leaving Las Vegas' is far less dolorous than might be expected. Passionate and furiously alive"	POS
United States	Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly	"A weirdly haunting experience (...) Dark and giddy at the same time, 'Leaving Las Vegas' takes us into dreamy, intoxicated places no movie about an alcoholic has gone before."	POS
United States	Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times	"One of the best films of the year (...) That he is an alcoholic and she works the streets are simply the turnings they have taken. Beneath their occupations are their souls. And because Ben essentially has given up on his, the film becomes Sera's story, about how even in the face of certain defeat we can, at least, insist on loving, and trying.	POS

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