Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Directed by Terry Gilliam

Film Review

In adapting Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, director Terry Gilliam knew that he was attempting the impossible and that the film, if he ever completed it, was unlikely to win unanimous approval from audiences and critics.  Gilliam himself remarked that he had set himself the task of making one of the great movies of all time, as well as one of the most hated.  The film's extremely poor performance at the box office and the plethora of bad reviews must have reassured the director that he had at least fulfilled half of his brief.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is one of the most idiosyncratic and wildly daring American films of the 1990s, one that puts star actors Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro into totally unsympathetic roles in which they are virtually unrecognisable, and which sought to capture the sheer madness and freedom of Hunter S. Thompson's important counter-culture novel.  As a piece of art, Gilliam's film is undoubtedly a fine achievement (the effects work alone is stunning); as a piece of cinema, it is virtually unwatchable.  Right from the off, the film does its utmost to drive its audience towards the cinema exit, and any spectator who hopes that the film will settle down and acquire something in the way of narrative cohesion will be constantly disappointed.  This is not a film which tells a story; it is a film that attempts to convey an experience, the experience of complete sensual and emotional release that comes whilst under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.

Had Gilliam made the film in the early 1970s (the era in which Thompson wrote the original novel), it would most probably have met with a far more enthusiastic reception.  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a film that has missed the Zeitgeist by almost three decades.  It serves no purpose being made in the late 1990s and the audience that might once have appreciated it have all grown up and moved on (the ones who haven't died from narcotics-related illnesses).  It is a perfect example of the film folly, a cinematic exploit intended not to please an audience but to gratify a filmmaker's desire to do something completely original.  Whilst we can respect Terry Gilliam's artistic ambition and admire certain aspects of the totally unhinged film he ending up making, there are not many people who would ever admit to saying they enjoyed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Watching it alone in a small darkened room is probably the closest anyone can ever get to experiencing an LSD trip without actually taking the drug.  This could well be the most underrated masterpiece in film history.  Or the worst.

Film Synopsis

The freelance journalist Raoul Duke is on his way to Las Vegas, ostensibly to write a report on a motorbike race.  Accompanied by his lawyer Dr Gonzo, he combines business and pleasure and undertakes the journey whilst under the influence of mind-altering drugs.  Their trip is one of drug-fuelled manic excess, in which they scare hitchhikers to death and trash hotel rooms, oblivious to anything around them.  Sometimes the only way to make sense of the world is to go a little mad...