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Jeremy Clarke reviews

Leaving Las Vegas

Distributed by
Pioneer LDCE

Cage, who from the opening has a penchant for going round supermarkets filling trolleys with booze bottles of every conceivable shape and size, gets fired from an L.A. movie company. So he decides to drive to Las Vegas and crash down at a motel with the intent of drinking himself to death. Then he runs into high class hooker Shue and - proving unable to have the sex he paid her for - spends a drunken night in her conversational company.

Shue's own life is in something of a crisis itself, with gangsters on the trail of her violent Russian pimp Sands and she responds to something in Cage, inviting him to live in her home for his last remaining months. The pair slowly fall in love, but Cage is not going to deviate from his self-destructive purpose.

A deceptively simple plot, perhaps, but a perfect framework around which British-born director Figgis weaves compositions both visual and musical (he also wrote the memorable, jazzy score himself). The cinematography is a joy - whether we're looking at supermarket alcohol shelves, neon-soaked Vegas nightscapes, expressionist-lit sex scenes or matter-of-fact facial close-ups - and given the evident superb source master used and Pioneer's typically flawless transfer, the disc does them proud.

Having truly excelled itself in the picture department, the disc goes on to score full marks in that of sound - Figgis is one of those rare directors equally involved in both since he composes his own scores - and his work here is wonderful, aurally transforming your living room into a smoke filled jazz dive for the duration, creating exactly the right mood and atmosphere for the tale he as director seeks to tell. Other memorable elements include cicadas which you would SWEAR are buzzing somewhere in the room!

Both lead characters may be on the social margins, but there's something undeniably attractive about them and their crossing paths. Cage - whose performances are usually OUT THERE - excels himself portraying a slow slide to oblivion and death, while Shue not only copes well with a role that makes considerable demands on her (nudity, simulating blow jobs, being beaten up by college boys) but turns in a memorable onscreen counterpart to Cage.

The actor won an Oscar for this - and deservedly so. The film also received three other nominations (Best Actress - Shue, Best Director - Figgis, Best Writer - Figgis). It's a tremendous piece of work by all concerned and one particularly suited to home cinema given the intimate at-home-in-my-room nature of its subject matter. What one requires of a disc of LLV is competent chaptering, decent unobtrusive sidebreak that doesn't interrupt any music or dramatic moment in mid-flow and a perfect transfer of picture and sound. This disc, which is not only an Entertainment title but also a Lumiere one, fulfils all requirements more than adequately. Go buy.

Film: 5/5
Picture: 5/5
Sound: 5/5

Review copyright © Jeremy Clarke, 1998.

E-mail Jeremy Clarke

Check out Pioneer's Web site.

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