"We were somewhere on the edge of the desert when the drugs took
hold," explains the stoned and wild-eyed journalist Raoul Duke. He
speeds along like an out-of-control missile in the opening to FEAR AND
LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, which is based on the famous
semi-autobiographical novel by Hunter Thompson about his gonzo
journalism. Set in a stoned-out 1971, the movie's central character,
Raoul, and his sidekick and attorney, Dr. Gonzo, spend the entire
picture ripped, stoned, plastered, wasted, you name it. With a
cornucopia of drugs in the trunk of their rented Cadillac convertible,
they are on their way to Las Vegas, where they will cover the national
convention of District Attorneys, among other things. Mainly they are
going so they can party using every illegal substance you've ever heard
of and some you haven't.
As directed by the wildly imaginative Terry Gilliam from MONTY
PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, BRAZIL, THE FISHER KING and TWELVE MONKEYS,
the comedy starts off so ridiculously that you can expect many people
to walk out in disgust.
The remarkably talented Johnny Depp plays the lead, Raoul. To his
credit, Depp takes what starts as an almost unwatchably bad movie and
manages to make it kind of fascinating. With arms waving at imagined
terrors, with feet and legs wobbling so he can barely walk without
falling, and with a voice that sounds like it's coming from the bottom
of a well, he looks so convincingly drugged out of his mind that you'll
want to help him into treatment. When he walks, he darts from wall to
wall due to his drug-induced paranoia. You see, he has killer bats
chasing him. Depp's performance is so over the top and mesmerizing
that he manages to make you care about a highly unsympathetic
character.
Benicio Del Toro takes a more by the numbers approach to the part
of Dr. Gonzo. He mumbles so many of his lines that he makes his
character believable but rarely interesting.
A host of actors appear in cameo roles. Gary Busey plays a macho
policeman who chases the speeding and stoned Raoul. The policeman is
an understanding sort, who orders Raoul to get some rest and asks only
for a little kiss in return. Christina Ricci plays a teenager who
paints large oil portraits of Barbra Streisand while watching her on
television. Raoul and Dr. Gonzo have nightmares about her naming them
in a statutory rape trial.
In one of the film's best scenes, Raoul's drugged brain morphs a
bar of conventioneers into a group of alien monsters like those in the
bar scene in STAR WARS. In another scene, the pattern in the carpet
starts to move and eventually turns to flowing blood. The special
effects in the movie are inventive and the psychedelic colors of the
sets by THE CROW's Alex McDowell are eye-catching. And when the movie
gets utterly absurd, as it frequently does, at least the audience is
entertained by some great music of the late 60s and early 70s.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS runs 1:55. It is rated R for
constant drug usage and would be fine for kids only if they are of
college age.
Copyright © 1998 Steve Rhodes
