* Original Area: Previews
* Original To  : Dr. Gonzo (1:163/110)
The movie version of "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" attempts to answer the 
question: How much excess can you put on celluloid without losing the 
essential point of a story? Unfortunately, the movie pays mere lip service to 
the point of Thompson's original story and treats it as a cinematic exercise 
in hotel room trashing. Johnny Depp plays a very creditable Hunter S. 
Thompson, complete with a clipped, mumbling manner of speaking. For reasons 
that escape me, they elected to steal a line from "Song of The Doomed" to 
inject into this movie and in the change of context they lost the meaning of 
the original paragraph. The stolen line refers to riding the high crest of a 
wave whose who high water mark can be spotted just short of Las Vegas. In 
Thompson's original telling, the wave was a political sense of destination. 
In the movie, the wave is a drug consciousness.
Benicio del Toro, despite growing a Molson muscle for the part, is 
unconvincing as Thompson's 200 Pound Samoan attorney. Del Toro spends the 
movie looking confused and has none of the menace of the real Oscar del 
Lacosta.
The special effects were sparsely added to the film which I suppose is 
difficult to render when you are trying to convey the perceptions of someone 
who has ingested a hellish combination of pharmaceuticals.
The plot premise of the movie involves Hunter Thompson going to Las Vegas to 
cover the Mint 400 Motorcycle race for Sports Illustrated. Thompson brings 
along "two bags of grass, seventy five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of 
high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine and a whole 
galaxy of multi-coloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and a quart of 
tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen 
amyls." In addition to this barely adequate array of recreational drugs for a 
weekend outing, De Lacosta has a vial of Adrenicrone, a HUGE Bowie knife, a 
.345 Magnum and a bad attitude. 
Thompson makes it to the start of the race but becomes disallusioned with 
covering it when the whole scene becomes a vast, inpenetrable dust bowl. 
Thompson retreats to his hotel room and the casinos where he damages himself 
and the premises. Throughout this frenzy, Thompson chronicles the events on a 
tape recorder. To his credit, Thompson was legendary in his abuses of room 
service and hotel rooms before rock bands made it a mandatory part of their 
tour behaviour.
Rating: 2 vials of pineal extract and a couple of playings of Cream's "The 
White Room."
--- Maximus 2.00
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