Like Laurel and Hardy on acid, Gonzo and Duke's friendship consists mainly of the two threatening each other with guns, hunting knives and shower curtain rods.īut the strongest magnet in this psychedelic morass is Johnny Depp who, as the story's antic, disgusting and seductive spirit guide, is impossible to look away from.

This has the paradoxical effect of making the film, like a train wreck, both difficult to look at while at the same time compulsively watchable.ĭel Toro is fantastically funny (and 40 pounds heavier than usual) as the bloated, substance-abusing lawyer. There is no sober, detached point of view from which one can safely observe the proceedings.

Every few minutes, it seems, something is jumping off the lurid screen, whether it is the ever-present cigarette holder jutting from Duke's leering face or the limp head of a deer carcass on the hood of a jeep.

The camera becomes, as it were, a third participant in Duke and Gonzo's debauchery, reeling, vibrating and distorting as the chemical vortex swallows them-and us-deeper and deeper into its altered state. and Vegas, which, according to Duke's voice-over narration, is just about 'when the drugs kicked in.' (That would be some or all of the following: beer, pot, coke, ether, acid, mescaline, an assortment of pills, and something called 'adrenochrome.') From that point on, in fact, the drugs never kick out. The story catches up to their big, swerving convertible-known as the Red Shark-midway between L.A. Thompson is here represented by the character of Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp), while Acosta is called Dr. It's also a wide-angle snapshot of the great American dystopia-set against a background of Vietnam and social change-that occurred in what Thompson called 'The Foul Year of Our Lord, 1971.' Thompson's twisted-no, wrenched-roman a clef about his narcotic-filled journey to cover an off-road motorcycle race and a district attorneys' conference in the Nevada desert, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' delves much deeper than the literal level of personal dysfunction exhibited by him and his traveling companion, attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta. While not a great sensation-you may in fact feel like throwing up-it is a sign of great movie making, particularly when the movie is essentially about the limits to the variety and amount of pharmaceuticals that two individuals can consume without killing themselves.īased on Hunter S. The aftertaste of director Terry Gilliam's ferociously visual, visceral 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' lingers well past the closing credits, like a bad hangover. Johnny Depp stars in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.'

Cast of fear and loathing in las vegas