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A screenwriter drinks himself to death in Las Vegas, forming an uneasy friendship with a prostitute.
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Ben Sanderson, a Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his alcoholism, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
"Based on John O'Brien's semi-autobiographical novel, 'Leaving Las Vegas' could be defined as a unique story about love, but trapped in the center of a spiral of self-destruction. Nicolas Cage plays a screenwriter who, out of work and abandoned by his family, decides to travel to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. But it is there where he meets an attractive prostitute (Elisabeth Shue), with whom he establishes a peculiar agreement: they will live together, but she cannot demand that he stops drinking, and he will not judge her for the nature of her job. In short, it is a bitter movie about falling in love and accepting the other despite everything, even if the disaster between the two can be seen coming from the beginning. It is totally the antithesis of Hollywood romantic comedy, so it can be a bit hard to digest. However, it is worth it for its leading performances: Shue won an Independent Spirit Award, and Cage reached the peak of his career with the Oscar for Best Actor."