Las Vegas has been a long-time favourite for Hollywood’s directors. There is simply something intoxicating about the Sin City’s menu to suit all appetites that meets perfectly with a Hollywood storyboard. Whether it’s the glitter and glimmer of the Vegas strip, the casino atmosphere, the endless debauched stag nights or its historical biology to the mob.
Vegas will continue to inspire writers to set their tales in the Nevada hot spot. Many gems have been set there already and we have selected five of the best here.
Casino
Martin Scorsese’s 1995 release Casino remains the benchmark for any Vegas film. By basically keeping with all the ingredients that five years earlier had made Goodfellas one of the finest films of all time, and transferring the recipe to the Nevada desert (where many problems are buried), Casino was a sure fire hit. Telling the tale of the Chicago mob’s running of a Vegas casino, here is a movie that shows the ugly underbelly of the city and pulls no punches in its gory gruesome violence. As so often with Scorsese titles of the time, the cast is led by Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci who both give outstanding performances. They are joined by real life poker fan, James Woods and Sharon Stone who has never been better. At over three hours, it is a forensic study of the city and everything that goes on inside it. What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.
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Leaving Las Vegas
An Oscar winning turn for Nicolas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas tells the tale of the drunken suicide wish of screenwriter Ben Sanderson. This presents a far murkier and grimier Vegas than even Casino manages, preferring instead to focus on those living and slowly drowning in Vegas rather than earning and hustling there. Cage is joined by prostitute Elizabeth Shue and together they descend into the nothingness, on the way encountering alcoholism, rape and every other horror the Vegas underworld has in store. That’s not to say this movie doesn’t have its lighter more comical moments just that it’s ultimately a film about someone choosing Vegas to be his place of drawn-out alcoholic demise and as such has dark source material. The city is cast as a place where many things, be they dreams, fortunes or in this case people, come to die.
The Hangover
There have been no shortage of stag night in Vegas escapade movies, but the first of the three Hangover films is perhaps the funniest and best of them all. If our first two selections, documented the criminal Vegas underbelly and grimier lives of the city’s wounded inhabitants, this film is more recognisable to those who think Vegas and see only excess. Gigantic neon, million roomed hotels, prostitutes on call, drink and drugs on tap, gambling of all varieties and spectacular entertainment all feature heavily here. Three bachelors and one soon-to-be groom, embark on a Vegas adventure fuelled by substances, some legal, some not so legal. The film centres on the losing of the groom of the group following night one’s antics. These antics render the rest of the gang with a temporary amnesia and so the crew set out to retrace the previous night’s steps and find the groom before his big day. Those steps include a tiger in the bathroom, missing Holocaust rings and an insane Korean gangster.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Monty Python weirdo Terry Gilliam directs this equally weird and trippy trip to Vegas starring Benicio Del Toro and Johnny Depp, here playing his former friend the late new journalist Hunter S. Thompson. One of the drivers of gonzo Journalism, Thompson penned this autobiographical novel, outlining the 60s American dream. Fear and Loathing is yet another title on the list that shows Vegas in a way it’s never been approached before, which perhaps goes to show the detractors that Vegas is actually a richer, multi-layered cultural environment than some might argue. Gilliam literally flipped the strip upside down to create a wonky vision of a wonky world that still manages to be comprehensible piece of cinematic art that really explores the inner workings of a journalistic genius at the height of his drug inspired and totally insane awesomeness.
Swingers
Not a film fully dedicated to Vegas but rather LA. That said, Sin City does play a more than significant role in the movie by way of a spur-of-the-moment midnight detour. Aspiring Hollywood wannabe actors, not to mention Rat Pack fanatics, Mike and Trent, played here by Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn respectively visit the city to take advantage of everything on offer there. The trip was inspired by heartbroken Mike, crushed by separation from his girlfriend, allowing his buddy Trent to reintroduce him to all the good things in life, namely drink, drugs, girls and money. The pair’s image based entirely on DeNiro and Scorsese, Sinatra and Martin reads like a roll call of Italian American cultural icons, complete with Goodfella suits and quiffed hair. Where else would they wind up but Vegas?
