Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by Hunter S. Thompson, Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni, Tod Davis, Alex Cox. Starring Johnny Depp (Raoul Duke) and Benicio Del Toro (Dr. Gonzo).

Bottom line: Well done and very trippy movie.

3/4

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the story about journalist Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo. Duke is on an assignment to report on a big motorcycle race held outside of Las Vegas. The two decide to make the trip a drug fueled journey to search for the American Dream.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the adaptation of the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson, if you aren’t familiar, was the Rolling Stone journalist responsible for inventing “Gonzo Journalism” which focuses on the experience of an event rather than event itself as in the case of traditional journalism. The product of Gonzo journalism is something of a stream of consciousness: half fact, half fiction.

This is a really rather grotesque movie and, quite honestly, I didn’t really like it. At the same time, it was quite a good movie. That sounds contradictory. If it was a pretty good movie, why wouldn’t I like it? Well, the guys in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are taking an obscene amount of drugs. It’s a trip that might very well kill them. It isn’t a happy experience and the movie illustrates that well particularly through the cinematography.

The acting in this film is really good. I was initially turned off because I saw Johnny Depp acting like Captain Jack Sparrow or the Mad Hatter or Tonto and I for one am sick of drunken Keith Richards. But this is the first movie that he ever acted this way. With that in mind, I’ll let it pass. And after watching some interviews with Hunter S. Thompson, I found Depp’s impression spot on. Benecio Del Toro’s performance as Dr. Gonzo is stellar. The pair jump between the effects of the drugs seamlessly as naturally as if one drug wears off to be replaced by another.

Throughout Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas we never really know what is true and what is a drug induced hallucination. You can say this type of thing about lot’s of movies but here it transcends the movie itself. When I said that Thompson’s work is half fact and half fiction, I really meant that we can’t really take very much of it as “fact”. I always thought Fear and Loathing was about Hunter S. Thompson and his friend going to Vegas but, really, it is about the invented character, Duke, going to Vegas. I wasn’t particularly familiar with Hunter S. Thompson so I watched a 1970’s or ‘80’s BBC documentary about him. The documentary maker, like so many of Thompson’s fans, confused Thompson with Duke. The filmmaker even took Thompson the Vegas hoping to see the cult hero in action. Thompson then spoke about this tendency. When he is invited to speak at a university, are they hoping to hear Raoul Duke or Hunter S. Thompson? I originally thought that the premise, a motorcycle race, was the “fact”. I made the mistake of reading fiction as “non-motorcycle race” instead of “everything.” The identity of Raoul Duke, the film’s narrator, adds another layer of fiction to the film; even though Depp looks and sounds like Thompson, he is Raoul Duke.

To add another layer of uncertainty, consider the marketing campaign for this film. According to an interview I heard, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas focused heavily on TV spots and the majority of them featured Cameron Diaz even though she's in the movie for about a minute. It feels like the truth of this movie is muddled into fiction on every level; from the story to the marketing, nothing is reliable.

Would I recommend Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? You might want to pass, for the time being, if you are looking for something light and fun, but other sure; it is a weird and disconcerting movie but enthralling.