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#1
Leaving Las Vegas
(Five out of Five Stars)
John O'Brian struggled to complete a few masterpiece books. One of them was actually completed and was titled, Leaving Las Vegas. Mike Figgis, a brilliant screenwriter and musician took that novel and transformed it with breathtaking success into one of the greatest love stories put on film. Leaving Las Vegas is an absolute magnum opus! Vivid music, radiant writing and luminous acting culminate to assemble a film that has no flaws and should be recognized as everything that the average cheap romantic comedy has tried to be, but failed (for failures see You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, Titanic etc.) Why is Leaving Las Vegas different? Because this film doesn't cut corners and insult the viewers' intelligence by failing to inject real desperation and humanness into the story and assume that it can get away with formulaic, commercial, well taught propagandist Hollywood sappy/crappy love manipulations. This work, instead, delivers an example of the authentic need for human connection and introduces a hero willing to act upon his loss in order to seek out the connection no matter the cost. Ben Sanderson is, after all, on a mission. He is out to destroy himself. He is a protagonist who will discover in Sera the muse to inspire his demise, and find that his last bit of life is more than most of us project in an entire, worry free lifetime. A spot on story of heroics which will, sadly, rarely be acclaimed for its brilliance as such. Cage and Shue are brilliant in a work that literally looks, sounds, and feels like, well, like truth.
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