Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Director: Terry Gilliam Cast: Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Ray Cooper, Wal G. Ludwig, Ellen Barkin, Gary Busey, Cameron Diaz, Flea, Mark Harmon, Katherine Helmond, Lyle Lovett, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Harry Dean Stanton, Tim Thomerson, James Woods Screenplay: Terry Gilliam, Tony Grisoni Producers: Patrick Cassavetti, Laila Nabulsi Runtime: US Distribution: Universal Rated R: language, drug use
By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net)
A man wakes up in a hotel suite. He's disoriented from the remnants of five or six clashing narcotics still sweeping about his body. He finds a flashlight taped to his face, and a strange electrical apparatus mounted to his torso. He doesn't remember his last conscious moment, or his last thought, or what he's doing, or why he's there. He gets off the bed and finds that he must wade through dirty brown water as deep as his knees, in which floats vomit and other solidified unpleasantries. As he, confused, moves slowly around the suite, memories of rape and regurgitation flood his mind, and he finds that the only way to feel better is to do more drugs.
If the above description sounds displeasing to you, welcome to the human race. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam's adaptation of the famous Hunter S. Thompson novel, is perhaps the most viscerally revolting picture I've ever seen. It's often a funny movie, and is enhanced by some terrific acting from Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, but the film is too real for its own good. It's a painful and difficult-to-sit-through exercise in excess.
Many critics would chose to address the similarities between Thompson's novel and Gilliam's film, but I haven't read the book. I haven't read it because I was born many years after the sixties were over, and because I don't find drugs particularly interesting by themselves. I love Gilliam as a film maker though; he is a visual genius, a visionary in every possible way. Both Brazil and The Fisher King are wonderful, intelligent, and moving films. Fear and Loathing has his style, and is perfectly conceived in its visual presentation (it's apparently as faithful an adaptation of the novel as possible). But he seems to go off the deep end with style, so much that the film loses all of its humor by the end and becomes essentially a chore to endure.
There is, in fact, a story here, but I don't know that I could successfully convey it to you. It centers around Duke (Depp) and Gonzo (Del Toro), a couple of guys who do a lot of drugs and specialize in trashing hotel suites in Las Vegas. There are a many cameos, and a few subplots, such as one involving a perverted police officer (Gary Busey). There's one about a deprived waitress (Ellen Barkin) in an all-night diner, and another about a pre-teen artistic religious freak (Christina Ricci) who primarily creates portraits of Barbara Streisand. If there's one thing I can say about the turn of events, it's that nothing is predictable.
The film begins on a high note, with Duke and Gonzo raging down the desert highway, thrashed on cocaine, alcohol, and who knows what else (and they top it off with inhalation of ether). They think they see bats, and they try to kill them. They pick up a hitchhiker, who gets very scared. Later, they drop acid, and when they finally reach Vegas, the strange patterns in the carpeting and wallpaper flows in that way that people who have done acid might recognize. Gilliam's presentation of the material is energetic and never boring, and in these opening scenes lively and funny. The way the floor moves in acid-induced strangeness is particularly interesting, as are all the lizards that Duke thinks he sees in the cocktail lounge. Depp, with this role, adds yet another performance to his list of performances that are vastly different from one another; here, you can barely tell it's him. Del Toro is also good, in a frightening and disgusting sort of way.
But the film is too much by the end. I'm sure Thompson's novel dabbles in wretched excess, but Gilliam's film seems excessive for the sake of being excessive. We get three (yes, three) close-up shots of people vomiting their guts out. What Duke and Gonzo do to their hotel rooms is so awful, and it just makes me want to look away. I think that implications of what the 60s did to drug use still shine through very clearly, but the film is so sickening and distracting that any kind of theme simply drowns in the dirty brown water.
** out of **** (5/10, C)
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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