FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is one of those films that has no one to identify with, no one to care for, and practically no one to feel sorry for except possibly for a few familiar faces who lent their talents to Director Terry Gilliam, like Harry Dean Stanton and Katherine Helmond. The only reason to give "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", any serious consideration at all is the performance of Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke, if only for the great dramatic prose he delivers in a few - very few - lucid moments in his reportage on selective groups of people, in a specific place, at a particular point in time. In actuality the subject matter of the film is best served by going to the source material, the cynical cult classic written by Hunter Thompson upon whom Depp’s character is based.
Hunter first made his reputation with the definitive book on the Hell’s Angels, based on his own experiences after having lived with them for several years. His tenure with them overlaps the period covered by Tom Wolfe in his book, "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" about Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. I only mention this because Duke and his lawyer, called Dr.Gonzo, seem to be part of the left over remnants of the drug culture from this period that had it’s roots in the LSD experiments at Berkeley that figure in Wolfe’s book. The only positive point the movie makes is the fact that Duke, like his real life counterpoint and creator, Thompson, can create something of merit out of his own chaotic lifestyle.
There were a few laughs, especially with Michael Jeter as a spokesman at the Sheriff’s convention that should have been the highlight of the film, but the participants were more like cardboard figures for Gilliam to hold up to ridicule rather than the full blooded buffoons he probably wanted them to be. It’s part of a motif that would have worked umpteen years ago, when counter-cultural themes were de-rigeuer, but not today.
Gilliam seems to be drawing an analogy between the hallucinatory image of the American Dream that Vegas promises to deliver with its get-rich-quick gambling tables and the promise of enlightenment and fun that drugs are supposed bring to Duke and Dr. Gonzo. Instead Vegas is a sea of neon lights, Elvis wedding chapels, rows of addictive slot machines, carnival barkers and street hawkers selling their public an empty bill of goods; and Duke is a awash, literally and figuratively, in the sewage of his own imagination. Ultimately watching "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is like reading a first draft of a novel. It’s all over the place. and is as incoherent as its drugged out protagonists.
There is one low key scene in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" that went right to the heart with Ellen Barkin as a waitress who has known violence. It was a rare moment in what was otherwise a waste of time.
There has been one other attempt to capture the unique personality of Hunter Thomson by Bill Murray in "Where the Buffalo Roam" from 1980. It is for curiosity seekers only.