Leaving Las Vegas

REVIEW
In bringing John O'Brien's decidedly downbeat novel about a man bent on suicide through alcohol to the screen, director Figgis and company took a huge cinematic risk that pays off in spades. This sultry and sometimes subversively funny examination of a self-declared loser (Cage) and the proverbial "hooker with a heart of gold" (Shue) who befriends him is on the one hand as depressing a film as has been made and on the other remarkably refreshing and engrossing for its undaunted emotional honesty. Cage plays Ben, a self-destructive minor Hollywood player who heads for a final showdown with the bottle in Vegas. Once there, he takes up with Sera (Shue), a buff streetwalker who takes him in -- on the condition that she never try to convert him. Cage won a highly deserved Oscar for his unflinching portrayal, and Shue took advantage to shatter her Adventures in Babysitting image with a nuanced, rock solid performance.