Feeling Too Happy? Go Watch Cage In ‘Leaving Las Vegas’
After a career of playing one outlandish character after another, Nicolas Cage finally made the most of his chance of a lifetime.
That chance is called “Leaving Las Vegas,” and it won Cage a Best Actor Oscar at last March’s Academy Awards love-in.
In the film, which is based on an autobiographical novel written by the late writer/drunk/suicide John O’Brien, Cage plays Ben, a screenwriter/drunk/ultimate suicide who is tired of life and, therefore, decides one day to drink himself to death.
So he heads off to Las Vegas - Why? Because in that 24-hour atmosphere it’s possible to drink day or night without drawing too much attention? - where he rents a hotel room, fills a grocery cart with bottles of every liquor known to Foster Brooks and commences to souse himself silly.
Pretty soon he meets Sera, the gloomy-but-doe-eyed streetwalker who, in her own way, is also courting the grim sleeper. But she’s not doing it with a bottle; no, Sera is more likely to end up using one of her clients, or a pimp (such as the doomed one played by Julian Sands) to put out her lights.
Ben is into liquored self-abuse. Sera likes the company of others.
That is how they get together. And, the movie wants us to believe, it is why they stay together.
Because Ben provides Sera the company she craves, while she is willing to let him drown in tequila-bourbon-whisky shooters and 16-ounce tallboy chasers.
It’s true love, don’t you know.
Which, I’m sorry, is a concept that I can’t quite grasp.
The movie has its own built-in theme of tragedy in the sense that O’Brien didn’t live long enough even to see what Figgis had managed to put up on the screen. That aside, the film is little more than a curiosity about two very screwed-up individuals.
The acting isn’t even that good. Cage has been impressive in every major role he’s played, dating to 1982’s “Valley Girl.” Yet he’s remained an acquired taste to some critics, many of whom - perhaps because they expect so little of him - had no hesitation in overpraising him here.
His style is to do the unexpected, to push a role to the limits of what is expected - and then beyond. In some roles, as in Barbet Schroeder’s underrated “Kiss of Death,” he is superb. In others, as in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Peggy Sue Got Married,” he is more of an intriguing curiosity - sort of the cinematic equivalent of fingernails on the blackboard (which isn’t necessarily bad).
In that sense, though, his work in “Leaving Las Vegas” feels too scaled down, too modulated to be convincing. It’s a fine performance, but hardly his best (it may not even rank among his top five).
But Cage is not the film’s main problem. He is given little help by co-star Elisabeth Shue, who began her career as the fresh-faced star of “Adventures in Babysitting” and who, here, tackles the role that put her at the top of her profession.
Imagine, the sister of a “Melrose Place” star vying with the likes of Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon for an Oscar.
Imagine, indeed. Try her best, Shue plays a street-wise prostitute about as well as Madonna would a virgin. Authentic in those scenes where she’s called to be compassionate, she’s lost in those that require her to be survivor-tough.
And Figgis doesn’t much help either one. He can’t take out the more obvious of O’Brien’s preaching (symbol alert: Ben is past tense of the verb to be; Sera - pronounced Sarah - is the Spanish future tense of to be), and he can’t make Ben and Sera’s relationship into anything more than a co-dependent death wish.
Is that love? Only in the movies - and 12-step programs. Rated R **-1/2
Heavy Metal
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Filmed in 1981, this collection of animated stories explores the many sides of modern science fiction. As with all compendiums, especially those that feature the work of many artists, it has its highs and lows. But its bests bits - especially one sequence involving a futuristic cab driver - are fascinating, and the film as a whole makes for perfect midnight viewing. Long available in bootleg editions, this official Columbia TriStar edition was directed by Gerald Potterton. Rated R
Also available: “Grumpier Old Men,” a sequel to 1993’s “Grumpy Old Men,” features another exercise in wish-fulfillment by veteran comedy actors Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. This time, Sophia Loren joins Ann-Margret as the love interests. Rated PG-13
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