Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
by Terry Gilliam
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Actor: Benicio Del Toro, Ellen Barkin, Gary Busey, Johnny Depp, Tobey MaguireDirector: Terry Gilliam
Brand: UNI DIST CORP. (MCA)
Writer: Terry Gilliam
Producer: Elliot Lewis Rosenblatt
Producer: Harold Bronson
Writer: Alex Cox
Writer: Hunter S. Thompson
Writer: Tod Davies
Writer: Tony Grisoni
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 119 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-11-17
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- AC-3; Anamorphic; Closed-captioned; Color; Dolby; DVD; Widescreen; NTSC
DVD Reviews of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
DVD Review: The book is better
Summary: 4 Stars
The only thing I remember thinking about this movie when it appeared in theaters was "Why release a film version of this now?" Who thought Hunter S. Thompson's seminal novel about drug addiction and Las Vegas would play to a savvy 1990's audience? At least the studio did the right thing by hiring Monty Python member and auteur of the bizarre Terry Gilliam to lens the picture. Outside of Luis Bunuel or Salvador Dali, I can't think of any other artist who could pull off such a wacky, unusual project. Thompson's novel, if you're not familiar with it, recorded the exploits of a journalist (Thompson himself) and his lawyer (Thompson's real life legal eagle) as they descended into one bleak bout with narcotics after another, all while supposedly covering the Mint 400 motorcycle race for Rolling Stone magazine. The novel theoretically details the search for the real America--or at least the American Dream--in the early years of the 1970s. Finding allusions to an ephemeral American paradise is difficult in the extreme in a book chock full of crazed drug abuses because the hilarity of two guys tottering on the edge of insanity again and again tends to obscure any meaningful message. But Thompson did pull it off.
Aside from a few scenes, Gilliam's film version largely fails to convey Thompson's fundamental themes. That the movie fails to do so should not surprise the audience. Cinema, after all, must rely on grandiose images and over the top antics to grab attention. Not every film falls prey to bombastic delivery, but "Fear and Loathing" cannot help itself. There's simply too much weirdness going on, too many metaphysical oddities popping up every few minutes, to worry about elucidating subtler themes. Within the first few minutes of the film, we know exactly what sorts of strange things will unfold. Hunter Thompson (Johnny Depp) and his lawyer (Benicio Del Toro, nearly unrecognizable under all that hair and sweat) roar down the highway on their way to Las Vegas and the Mint 400. Something's not quite right with these two. Their condition probably has a lot to do with the arsenal of narcotics stashed in the trunk of the car. They've got pills, booze, and a host of other powders and tonics designed to keep a person in the twilight zone for the next thirty years. They've even got a jug of ether, the fools. And they're driving. Fast. No wonder that hitchhiker (Tobey McGuire, by the way) decides to flee from the vehicle.
And that's the movie in a nutshell. Depp and Del Toro move from one wildly implausible scene to another, hallucinating madly and always an inch away from complete mental and physical breakdown. These two yucks stumble around a casino flipping their lids over the lights, sounds, and strange people they encounter. Thompson sees tables full of people morph into evil looking dinosaurs. The lawyer, locked in the bathroom, ponders dropping a tape player blaring Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" into the very bathtub in which he sits. This dynamic duo survives many incidents, including car crashes, a day spent at a police officers' convention, and the kidnapping of a local youth. You can imagine what their hotel rooms look like after a few days of such activities-well, you probably can't. Throughout it all, the guys try as hard as they can to maintain appearances. Depp's character provides plenty of voiceovers to help keep the audience afloat in a sea of narcotized blackouts. "Fear and Loathing" resembles more a giant stream of consciousness bender than a coherent film. What does it all mean? Good question.
A scene in the film explains part of the mystery. Thompson, in a reflective mood during a rare moment of actual work on his story, undergoes a flashback where he sees himself at a concert in the late 1960s. He waxes morosely on those lost days when the youth of America thought they could change things for the better. As we all know, nothing really changed. America eventually pulled out of Vietnam, but the flower children grew up and sprouted suits and cell phones. At least a few grew up; many perished as their addictions became too much to handle. Thompson and his lawyer represent the latter stages of the 1960's Counterculture. No one would have thought about using ether or going on two week binges during the Summer of Love, but by the time the early to mid 1970s rolled around, the halcyon glow of yesteryear has turned into a nightmare. These two characters are essentially the living, walking hangover of a bygone age. When you look at the movie in this way, the hilarity drains out of the whole thing quite rapidly. Heck, when you see Hunter Thompson today on a talk show, as I did recently, his shambling, incoherent speech doesn't garner a whole lot of chuckles from these quarters. His condition is depressing, and so is "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
The movie's good points include the two principal actors' performances and Gilliam's sure handed direction. Johnny Depp has probably never turned in a bad performance, and he continues his winning streak here as the hectic Thompson. He's got the look, mannerisms, and attitude of the gonzo journalist down cold. Del Toro frightens as the surly, monstrous lawyer. Most of the credit for this intriguing film falls on Terry Gilliam's shoulders; he's always at home creating believable scenes of altered reality, and this movie has more than its fair share. While I think "Brazil" and "Twelve Monkeys" are vastly superior to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," Gilliam has yet to disappoint me with any of his films. Give this one a shot if you're up to massive weirdness a metatectonic scale. I recommend reading the book first, though.
Description of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
No Description AvailableNo Track Information Available
Media Type: DVD
Artist: DEPP/DEL TORO/DIAZ
Title: FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
Street Release Date: 01/09/2007
Genre: COMEDY VIDEO
The original cowriter and director of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Alex Cox, whose earlier film Sid and Nancy suggests that Cox could have been a perfect match in filming Hunter S. Thompson's psychotropic masterpiece of "gonzo" journalism. Unfortunately Cox departed due to the usual "creative differences," and this ill-fated adaptation was thrust upon Terry Gilliam, whose formidable gifts as a visionary filmmaker were squandered on the seemingly unfilmable elements of Thompson's ether-fogged narrative. The result is a one-joke movie without the joke--an endless series of repetitive scenes involving rampant substance abuse and the hallucinogenic fallout of a road trip that's run crazily out of control. Johnny Depp plays Thompson's alter ego, "gonzo" journalist Raoul Duke, and Benicio Del Toro is his sidekick and so-called lawyer Dr. Gonzo. During the course of a trip to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, they ingest a veritable chemistry set of drugs, and Gilliam does his best to show us the hallucinatory state of their zonked-out minds. This allows for some dazzling imagery and the rampant humor of stumbling buffoons, and the mumbling performances of Depp and Del Toro wholeheartedly embrace the tripped-out, paranoid lunacy of Thompson's celebrated book. But over two hours of this insanity tends to grate on the nerves--like being the only sober guest at a party full of drunken idiots. So while Gilliam's film may achieve some modest cult status over the years, it's only because Fear and Loathing is best enjoyed by those who are just as stoned as the characters in the movie. --Jeff Shannon
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