Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

the leading man is my tpye

Some things I liked some I did not.

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

If you wanted to explorer and understand the different dimensions of human brain . . And it also tell you the author his journey in Las Vegas. This is the movies for people who wanted to explorer the different dimensions of human brain and also this movies tells you the real experience of drugs intake ....In last its a great movie on drugs and their effect on human brain .

Paranoid, unpredictable and out of control, Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp) and his lawyer Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) venture through a drug bender in Las Vegas. Adapted from the legendary journalist's book of the same title, Hunter S. Thompson's real life experiences and Terry Gilliam's strong direction create a marriage in psychedelic heaven. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas delivers all of the drugged up wackiness of a binge gone too long and taken too far.To the inexperienced with psychedelics, most of this film probably won't make sense on a few levels. There isn't much of a discernible plot: stuff happens, but nothing truly develops logically. Dialogue is spoken, but most of it doesn't seem important except the narration. Francis Ford Coppola famously stated that Apocalypse Now, "...is not about Vietnam...it is Vietnam." Fear and Loathing isn't a film about drugs, it is a drug.Much like the desired and adverse effects of taking too much LSD or smoking too much marijuana, there are two major tones in the film: The fear, then the loathing. The adventure begins as they start the drive into Vegas. The fear sets in as they arrive to check into the first of many hotel rooms. The acid kicks in, and Duke panics when he concludes he is too gone to deal with the check in lady. This continues with many funny and baked results. Then the mood shifts into a darker, much more menacing half where lines are crossed and the altered states feel inescapable.Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas isn't just about the hallucinogenic trip either. It draws parallels to an era of transition from the 1960s to the 1970s. After the drug trip, the movie concludes as if it all was a prolonged haze of confusion in a city with empty promises of the American Dream. Drug culture became more of an escape from the brutal realities than a movement for peace and love.

The first sentence that i read when i bought the DVD is ''Hate it, love it, Take the ride see for yourself''. Well I've taken the ride more than a few times and it is true u either hate it or love it :) It still fascinates me how this film was created, it's just a piece of art for me due to the way its been filmed and how it gives a pretty accurate view of how it feels to be under the influence of psychedelics. This movie is one of the few that i can watch over and over and still notice that I've missed some details i haven't seen the other times i viewed it. Also this film was dedicated to the late hunter s. Thompson who invented a new type of journalism, its called gonzo journalism. This movie is based on true events and it has made me curious about alternate lifestyles and especially the style of the 60's hippie. I found this one so special that i actually bought the book and i can say they are both equally as good, people that love movies that aren't as predictable as the common blockbuster this really is a must have seen film. I hope u will enjoy it as much as i did cause it really is one of a kind, Johnny Depp has done a wonderful acting job as well as his fellow actors ;) peace and love fellow earthlings

Terry Gilliam takes on the daunting task of adapting Hunter S. Thompson's psychedelic novel into an on screen feature, a task few directors including Martin Scorcese and Oliver a Stone attempted, but failed to make it pass the green lighting stage. The results aren't necessarily unsatisfactory, but show that some literacy works don't translate on screen efficiently, even with the most talented filmmakers working behind the camera. This black comedy starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro drags viewers through a loopy, psychedelic odyssey of a morally depraved duo who finds themselves intoxicated in what feels like more like a two-hour celebration of nearly drug in the book than a film with a cohesive story to follow. And with Terry Gilliam's inventive, but intoxicating visual methodology, it places it's characters through a loopy journey that is destined to leave audience either laughing hysterically or horribly disturbed by the vile nature of excessive drug escapades that pervades most of the film. The movie follows two stoners: the idiotic journalist Raoul Duke (played by Johnny Depp) and psychopathic lawyer Dr. Gonzo (played by Benicio De Toro) as they cruise in their red convertible through the deserts of Nevada and into the shiny streets of Las Vegas where he pursue their way to the American Dream, only to find themselves warped in a series of chaotic circumstances contributed by their compulsive drug addiction.If this film feels like a cerebral acid trip to you upon watching it, don't worry! You are not alone. With the characters letting wild on just about every drug in the book including pot, acid, heroin, cocaine, LCD, and what not; there is very little you can expect other than the feeling being sozzled out after taking a mind-altering substance. Terry Gilliam accomplishes this through a unique, but mind-bending technique involving visual distortion in intent of providing viewers with a feel of the condition Roaul and Gonzo are experiencing when drowning out in their excessive drug feud. During the scenes when the characters are experiencing withdrawals from hallucinagens, viewers watch as the camera bobbles at low angles back and worth, and the lighting obtains a reddish tint place an odd and uncomfortable feeling of intoxication. This technique is highly creative and shows the beauty of Terry Gilliam's immersive visual heft. Although the nightmarish imagery of Raoul's hallucinations such as the hotel clerk's head morphing into a monstrous alien creature is rather cheesy and unrealistic, it certainly paints a reasonable picture of the character's mental perspective. These scenes occasionally offer some good , but tend to be executed in an unsettling manner that towers surrealism over humor. By the end, the only humor we can manage to swallow out of these characters in some occasional solid one-liners but nothing memorable.While Terry Gilliam may have the visual style to compel the wild Las Vegas adventure, the film falls quite flat in the narrative department, offering an unwholesome mess of a plot with characters that are not only incredible foolish and vile in nearly every sense, but offer almost no backstory other than Raoul being a long-time journalist and Gonzo being an absent-minded lawyer, though it doesn't entirely defeat the likability of the characters. Their strange philosophy on the American Dream does provide at least some decent humor, but nothing clever. Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro are both funny every once in awhile, even in scenes when they're indulging in hardcore drug hysteria, and their performances are not bad to say the least. Raoul is arguably the most unusual and light- hearted role Depp has endure in his career, compared to his more clever outings. The same can probably be said for Toro as he is rarely accustomed to oddball, comedic roles. Though there performances don't link into the Oscar calibur, they do little to make up for the clobbered mess the plot delivers. The plot transcends through such choppy pacing it borders on the line of being incomprehensible. Although it seems Gilliam is trying to match the pacing with the psychedelic condition of the lead characters, the overall effect doesn't work in the way it should. Even though Gilliam supplements some liberties from Hunter S. Thompson's novel, it's clearly evident he's struggling to enhance the life and soul of Thompson's narration into from novel to the screen. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is probably not the most comfortable vehicle to sit through, nor does it demonstrate the best of Terry Gilliam's directorial talent, it still benefits from a humorous standpoint and provides a compelling cerebral that some will come to enjoy, while others will likely experience a sense of disgust.