Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Hunter S. Thompson wrote the novel Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas years ago, introducing Gonzo Journalism to the world. Our off the planet journalist (another inspired performance from the remarkable Johnny Depp) sets off with Dr Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro - The Usual Suspects, Excess Baggage) to cover a dust smothered desert motorcycle race. They get lost and stoned. Actually their brains have been bent well before they get to the race because Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is an astonishing and relentless homage to brains subjected to chemical warfare, and to two of Earth's citizens out of control.

Paranoia reigns! Carpets swirl and writhe, lounge lizards become lounge lizards, bats appear from nowhere, nothing. Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is one long, sometimes a little too long, tripped out cavort.

Our intrepid reporters imbibe acid, grass, cocaine and ether (ether!!!!) in an orgy of anti social, or entirely appropriate behaviour, depending on your point of view.

Their trashing of hotel rooms (unpaid for of course) beggar the imagination. Director, screenwriter Terry Gilliam of Monty Python, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen fame hasn't been much into drugs he says, but I'd say that if that's true, he's the sort who wouldn't need to be.

There's an important political sub plot to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. If you can understand excessive, unruly behaviour as a political statement then there is a point to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

If you're can't, and if you find voluminous vomiting unsavoury, and if you demand a discernible plot on the big screen, then you might walk out of the theatre, as a good many did. But no one should live like that all of the time.

These boys do go too far. A waitress (Ellen Barkin) becomes terrified of them. But these Gonzo journalists are a symptom not the disease. Las Vegas also goes too far. And that's the point.