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.

Bugsy

Gangster movies are a staple genre in pop culture, for some reason there is a strong identification with the rise and fall of criminals seeking to make it big and legal, some crime figures, real and ficitional have aquired mythological status, think of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Vito and Micheal Corleone, and indeed Ben "Bugsy" Siegel.

In thie film adaptation of his life and times Siegel (Warren Beatty) is a quick tempred jewish mob head from New York, he is rather happiely married, and at the same time a big womanizer, business is great thanx to the alliance he made with his childhood friend Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley) and Lucky Luciano (Bill Graham), being the totally impredictable man he is, he goes to Los Angeles for a two weeks business, he ends up buying a house in Beverly Hills, establishing a local brand of his mob activities under the control of Mickey Cohen (Harvey Keitel) and meeting a real life femme fatale, Virginia Hill (Annette Bening) who will be a key factor in his rise and fall.

Virginia is a mobster dream, with strong personality and a temper quicker then Bugsy's if this is even possible, the thing is that Bugsy loves her, this unconditional love will lead him to jeopardize his family stability, and his business activities, but it also takes him west to the Nevada desert where he has a visionary idea, building a big casino in the middle of the desert, the now legendary Flamingo.

Back then, Las Vegas was your average town on the highway, and everything still needed to be done, but Bugsy was an enthusiastic, and meets his partners to ask for the financing a huge (by the standards of that time) one million dollar, and the Casino is set up to open during the next holiday season, but building the hotel turns out to be a more difficult and more pricy task then what Bugsy and Virginia intitally thought, and as the costs were jumping, the anger of the investors rises, and all this will force Bugsy to make several sacrifices to make his dream come true, and it will test his loyalty to his principles, and his friends, and to Virginia, and their loyalty to him to the extreme limit.

Indeed, this is a tale of redmption, at the end of the day the dream of bugsy is to build a monument that will outlive him, something like a Charles Kane, Xanadu, and his other dream is to "make it legal", a place where gangsters can finally be accpted in society, and where people will fly from all over the country, and the world, to be part of the artificial paradise they created, Warren Beatty does such a good job in this movie, that it made me understand why Tarantino casted him as the original Bill in "Kill Bill", his charisma and talent is second to none, I think even the real Bugsy would be happy with his portrayal of him, Ben Kingsley, and especially Harvey Keitel and Elliot Gould, make great performances too, It seemed to me that Anette Benning weakned the movie, but not all that much, the real star in this movie is the building of "The Flamingo" itself, a dream so big that it finally destroys the dreamer.

This movie can seem lenghty in the middle, but it's full of passion and wit, under a master score by the legendary Ennio Morricone, Bugsy is motivated, by Love and Ambition and Loyalty, and at the end he loses the three, but his passion remains, I think I answered my question about why people love gangster movies, that's because of all these value that motivate them, a sort of a modern Robin Hood mythology, although the majority of them did not have all the nobility, but let's remember this is a movie, a mere fictional portrayal, and nobody will ever be interested in the real Bugsy Siegel's rape and murder history, Let me say that this movie is the third brother of "The Godfather" and "GoodFellas", and that Bugsy Was right, since the flamingo generated a hundred billion dollars from the initial six million dollars investment.

Year: 1991
Director: Barry Levinson
Starring: Warren Beatty, Anette Bening, Harvey Keitel