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. |