An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The first 5 minutes of this film is pure genius. I must give credit where it is due. You realise very early on that the setting, the costumes, the wide angle lens capturing the dessert, & the uncanny dialogue compressed with tape distortion & 60's EQ is all so contrasted that it sails to hilarity. And that is drugs in a coconut shell.. it's funny. This film isn't. In all my years of watching film & TV, I have never yet seen Drugs portrayed honestly. I don't know what the deal is, but everyone has a really mediocre & cliché opinion of drugs affects on the mind. In reality, you don't have people being chased home by a party of mars bars. Instead, you feel relevant to your surroundings. So much so that it is easy to become paranoid, yes. But it never takes over as long as you have trust & communication. It is similar to experiencing the format of your childhood without the nostalgia. Everything feels new once more. It is both enlightening & cleansing. Almost spiritual, as felicity ramifies freely. And all the bullshit of the world's economic greed are left to destroy themselves with risk & hope. Where as in movies.. people just act like total raving loonies. Stumbling all over the place, & embarrassing everyone around them awkwardly until the director demands the wavering plot to return to drama & jokes based upon what people have already seen & accepted. Instead of the careful pace & dosage made by men & women who's metacognition is in perfect check, so that they may better themselves by exploring the countryside, whilst familiarising themselves with how time can slow down to a steady tick, in order to take note of every beautiful detail in a heightened punctilious manner... Instead, you have near invincible sebaceous men deploring decorum & forswearing moral alacrity as though their inner sanctum is filled with ever spurning antipathy. And the reckless craving to disturb everyone around them. Well, this film is one of those films where the noises in your own head become louder than the dialogue in the film. "Drugs are BAD. Yes. We get it". I fail to see how yet another typical film with this dull & tired message has anything fresh to contribute? How about a film that says "Drugs are good"? Now wouldn't that be a controversy? Avoid this film. Unless you think drugs are cool. In which case you are stupid enough to laugh at the same tired joke over & over anyway.

Gonzo Journalism and the way it can take a person along the journey is unique. Minted in this edition of the book by Mr Hunter S Thompson its a first for this genre and in my opinion, is one of the best revealing style of story creation.Love this beginning in Mr Depps' Acting.This movie is one of my all-time classics

Journalist Raoul Duke and his 'attorney' Dr. Gonzo are heading to Las Vegas; ostensibly to cover a desert motorcycle race but given the quantity and variety of drugs the pair have consumed things get weird before they have even arrived in Las Vegas. They only get stranger when they arrive; the hallucinations and paranoia escalate and strangeness ensues.It is hard to describe the plot as it is basically a series of weird things happening due to our protagonists' use of an industrial quantity of drugs. Terry Gilliam is just the man to bring such weirdness to the screen and he does a fine job directing. Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro impress as Duke and Gonzo; it is easy to believe that they are really on something! The rest of the cast, which includes well-known actors in some minor roles, do well too. There are plenty of very funny moments as well as some disturbing ones… I can't imagine many viewers will watch this and feel inspired to try various drugs. Overall I'd say that if you demand a solid plot you bay be disappointed but if you want surreal weirdness you won't get much more weird or more surreal than this.

This is a love/hate movie, such as the matrix and various others that the mainstream might have a hard time to wrap they're mind around. Either you get it or you don't. To enjoy this to the fullest, you probably have to: 1) Have an idea who Hunter S Thompson was (which the character is based on) 2) Be more than 30 years old, and at least have some concept of how "old" USA or Europe was like, like it used to be in the 1990s, 80s, 70s and 60s. In cocaine cowboys they tell how they in the early 80s could walk into an airport with a suitcase full of cash and buy an airplane (try that today). If what goes on here played out in 2016, these character would be in jail max 10 minutes into the movie.3) Have some knowledge of drugs and they're effects or be familiar with shady characters that has been heavily into this so you know whats going on. This movie would be a good one to watch for a young police officer.I rank it as one of the best I've seen, along with blow, requiem for a dream, wolf of wall street and other absolutely top notch movies, it belongs to the elite division and the best that has come out of Hollywood, along with series like "breaking bad", which all are either based on actual stories or portray things and settings in a very realistic way to what actually is going on out there in the underworld, though spiced up a little extra with more action and humor added to it.