Leaving Lost Vegas

Why am I writing this blog?  It’s not as if there aren’t enough reviews our there, or that Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t do a pretty good job of aggregating all those opinions into something you can use.  But people often ask my opinion about movies, and I find myself explaining.  And sometimes, with movies like Leaving Lost Vegas, my view is a bit different.

I saw this years after it came out.  I had long heard that it was a gripping, but tragic performance by Nicholas Cage.  I was never quite in the mood to watch a drunk slowly die, though, so I kept skipping it.  Netflix is where I put movies that I know I should watch, but not right now.  Sometimes, because I don’t alway check to see what’s coming next, a movie like Leaving Los Vegas gets through.  So, instead of letting is sit, I decided to watch it.

First, I can’t say anything bad about the acting.  It’s all good, spot on, gripping.  But the story, I just didn’t buy.  I know a lot about alcoholism, a little about despair, and something about being a frustrated creative.  The story here seems to romanticize those elements, seeing something slightly noble about falling down the hole, knowing full well there’s only death at the bottom.  Waving away all offers of help.  Maybe, but I got bored after a while.  In fact, I started playing World of Warcraft while watching the movie.   I was doing this quest where you have to take some kind of magic cloak to some guy in a cave.  The only way to find the cave is to attract the attention of his pet bear, and it will point the way.  But the mechanics of getting the bear’s attention eluded me.  Stand in front, type wave, stand to the side, right click the bear, left click the bear, I kept trying different things.  It occured to me that I was playing a game that had me waving at a bear.  Over and over.  This is the game that somehow has me addicted.

I finally figured out the bear when the movie went off the rails.  Instead of sticking to the dying drunk, it went off to trail the somewhat random life of Elizabeth Shue’s hooker.  Dead pimp, frat rape, being thrown out of a casino, flashbacks to an abusive father, the cliches piled up quickly.  All bad men in her life, somehow contrasted with the drunken guy lying on her couch.  It didn’t make sense to me, either, but then she ripped off her top and he poured booze all over her at the pool.  That was pretty good.

In the end, I did feel guilty about the World of Warcraft distraction.  There was some sort of meaning going on, and it was passing me by.  But I think the movie could have done more to hold my attention, and I really think that the central premise never gave me anything to by into.  It’s always possible I would have enjoyed this in a theater.  Trapped in the darkness, alone in a sit, but anonymously part of a much larger crowd, I may have been open to the depths of the movie.  You never know.