Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
I knew that I wanted to watch this movie as soon as I saw the poster. The strange, oversaturated distortion of Johnny Depp’s face and neck instantly intrigued me. I knew nothing about the actual quality of this film except that it was based upon Hunter S. Thompson’s popular book by the same title. I have not read the book, so I will not be judging the cinematic adaptation based on the narrative, but in all honesty, this movie was tough to get through. It’s a joke of a film, which is something I hate saying about a movie that’s supposed to be a comedy. It’s messy, hard to follow, and simply not funny. While I did not enjoy this movie, I will admit that I loved the cinematography and aesthetic.
The movie starts off with Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and his lawyer Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) driving a fire red convertible across the desert to Las Vegas, equipped with a case full of drugs, alcohol, and weapons. It’s 1971 and they’re in Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, and their dangerous utilization of narcotics gets worse the longer they spend in Vegas. The movie follows these two characters as they run from their legal worries in Nixon’s America.
Once again, I’m not going to take a stab at the overall narrative arc of the film because I know that I might understand and appreciate the story if I read Thompson's novel, but from a cinephile perspective, I would have liked to see a little less repetition throughout. The movie has the same conflict, Raoul and Gonzo freaking out in their hotel room because of the things they did because of drugs, while they are still on drugs. It got pretty boring pretty quick to watch this same situation happen over and over again for almost two hours.
The saving grace of this film is the cinematography. The movie has some beautiful stills, cuts, and the colors, costuming, and lighting used throughout make for a really cool ‘70s desert vibe. I would love to own a coffee table book of stills from the film, it’s the only reason I watched until the credits.
While I am aware that this is a cult comedy, and that often cult comedies aren’t always considered “great works of cinema”, I really don’t recommend this movie. Even though the film looks awesome, it was painful to watch a movie that had literally no plot.
