Leaving Las Vegas

Since Bugsy Siegel imagined it (see our review of "Bugsy") Sin City has been known to contain all the forms of excess within it's limits, from the psychadelia of a Hunter Thompson to the crooning of Sinatra and the Rat Pack, to Pharaonic projects by Winn and his likes, yet on the outskirts of Vegas exists another limit, the place where dreams and illusions die, and the doomy question comes knocking "what remains when everything is gone ?" .

Ben Sanderson(Nicholas Cage) is a Hollywood agent who has hit rock bottom due to alcoholism, under the California Sun he manages to trash a beautiful existence the whole world creams about and throw it all at the foot of his mistress, the bottle, and since late alcoholism is full of unfunny ideas, Ben has the best of them all "Going to Vegas to drink himself to death".

After burning the remainder of his LA life, and since his firing from his last job got him a nice severance package, he puts his plan to work and goes to Vegas, checks in a motel, and on the Strip he accidentally meets Sara () a beautiful hooker, between the two, an odd relationship forms, based on "mutual understanding", he doesnet criticize her occupation, she doesnt criticize his "mission", but Sara is just his perfect match, she seen it all, she is more disillusioned then him, if that's possible, this relationship is deep and doomed, with and end that will surprise you, this is really a Hunter Thompson vision of vegas, the place where the American Dream dies.

The movie has a melancolic tone, it's similar to a free fall to the abyss of human misery, but with a shining light at the bottom, at the end Ben and Sara are metaphors of the successful and beautiful who are too odd to live, and too cool to die, and are stuck in this big mirage in the desert, a hole they can't, and don't want to get out of.

The chimestry between the two lead actors is a rare thing on movie screens, because they hit bottom , they are at the edge of honesty, the rest of the cast is for plot purpouses, this movie is about Ben and Sara and and that's it.

Mike Figgis makes a great tale of Vegas and despair, the city lights are filmed in a beautiful cinematography, and the fragility of Elisabeth Shue is not something you will forget soon, and anyways, if Vegas is the tomb of the American dream, then leaving Las Vegas.... a surrender to nothingness, and seening such a high concept within the limits of moviemaking is great by itself.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1997)

Ever heard of the American Dream, the Chevrolet, the nice house with the Drive-in, the malls, the blondes, this dream has been promoted by a zillion of movies and series from the early twenties, and that's why the American Immigration will be ever strong, despite Nagasaki, Vietnam, Irak, Guantanamo, and even recession.

Mr Hunter Thompson was a singulary Journalis, inventer of the "gonzo journalism", and a righteous witness to the Sixties in San Fransisco, so in the early seventies in the middle of the Vietnam War and during the Nixon administration, he decides to go to some sort of pilgrimage, a "savage journey to the heart of the American dream", so he takes a convertible, a bag full of all drugs known to man, a typewriter, and a Samoan laywer to a trip that was immortalized in the counter-culture canonic book "fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

Many directors and actors have tried to adapt this book, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Brando, Nicholson, but we had to wait for the end of the millenium and Terry Gilliam to see it in what became a canonic cult movie on it's own right.

Hunter Thompson handpicked Johnny Depp, to play him, or to be exact his Alter Ego Raoul Duke, and you can't omit the irony in choosing an actor who represented the American dream for two decades to do that, Thomoson even shaving his head personally which is a bold movie concidering the chances of it never growing back, Benicio Del Toro completes the cast as Dr Gonzo, the alter ego to the real life crazy lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta (who disappeared in mexico in 74) and cameos of "American Dream" stars such as Cameron Diaz, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, and the main character of the movie "the heart of the American Dream" the city of Las Vegas itself, with it's strip, Casions, affordable Luxury suites, and it's blinding lights.

Duke is sent to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race, and later has to cover a serious convention in Vegas on the other end of the American specturm, and between the two, he juggles with the components of counter culture, on a tightrope without a net below it, just the 3AM sound of desolation.

You have the Sinatra and the Rat-Pack component, you have the big circus with the jugglers and the clowns, you have the ingénue puritain teenagers, and the lone diners at 2 AM, and of course the Las Vegas strip with the flashing lights, plus all the parallel universes which are opened under Acid, Mescaline, Cocaine, Marijuana, or all of them at the same time, all that under the red sky of the involvment in Vietnam, and an acid generation of Cindrellas, following false prophets like Timothy Leary into the place where the wave ended up, in the middle of the desert.

You don't watch the movie in a classical facion, because it's a celluloid equivalent of a psychadelic album, like the "Jimmy Hendrix Experience", the soundtrack is aweome with Dylan, Tom Jones, Buffalo Springfield, and others, and Depp is not only playing Hunter Thompson, he IS him.

Thompson being the man who invented Gonzo Journalism, and a legendary Rolling Stone Magazine contributour, Dr Gonzo being the name of the character played by DelToro, the only thing i can promise is that this movie will affect you profoundly, and keep you wondering about it's famous "wave speech", and what if the sixties mouvement had succeeded, because all we see know is a direct result of their failure, and would we be stuck with reality-tv, three decades of Madonna, and the whole teen queen business, they owe a lot to this failure of good versus evil, and that's the impression you get as you leave the heart of the American Dream, on a Chevy Convertible, on the Highway number 15.