synopsis:

this is an adaptation of the book by hunter s. thompson. although the book seems unfilmable as it is a stream-of- consciousness affair and is more interested in making pithy observations and developing a tone than in presenting a narrative, Gilliam tells in this movie the story of the book and tries to capture Thompson's style.

Raoul Duke, who is a fictional representation of the book's protagonist, author Thompson, is headed to Las Vegas in the company of his "Samoan lawyer," Dr. Gonzo. The year is 1971, and Duke's ostensible reason for the journey is to cover the $50,000 Mint 400 Desert Race, but his real motivation seems to be to see how many Vegas hotel rooms he can trash and how many different concoctions of grass, cocaine, alcohol, uppers, mescaline, and acid he can imbibe. After being attacked by hallucinatory bats during the trek across the desert, the pair arrives on the strip before the end of the first reel, checks into their room, and spends the rest of the movie getting stoned and taking the audience on a bizarre visual journeyabout this movie:In this picture, starring benicio del toro and johnny depp, the narrator has more lines than the characters. This is a movie in which the technique of having a narrator works, primarily because every amusing or insightful comment is contained in the voiceover. Here's where we learn that the message behind 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' is to illustrate how 1971 was a turning point in the drug culture - the year that the innocence and empowerment of the late '60s turned rancid, leaving users burned-out and broken instead of free and flying high.this movie was criticized by many for being too long and having no real narrative. gilliam said in an interview about this movie:"I hope it makes a noise - I don't want it to go unnoticed. A lot of people will get angry but they'll probably get angry for the wrong reasons though. I actually don't think it's a drugs movie, strangely enough - if you make a film where people are at a bar drinking and smoking a lot, you don't say it's an alcoholics' movie, or a smokers' movie. It's not about that. The fuel may be drugs just like in other movies, with Sam Spade the fuel may be alcohol and cigarettes. What we do is allow our characters to get caught in a distorted world, which is already distorted by reality. We make it an altered reality which may be for the better and sometimes for the worse, depending on how much you have just imbibed."