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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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"I just wanted to carve a little Z on your forehead"
This is for sure one of my top ten favourite films. I must have watched it 20-30 times since it came out, and I and some friends have a habit of watching it at vorspiel if we're going out on town. It is just so hilariously funny that I don't even know where to begin. Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro both act in what I think are roles they can never top again. Having read the book by Hunter S. Thompson several times, I think this is one of the few films out there that actually manages to capture the essence of a book on screen without loosing too much of the content. The film itself should be well enough known to leave out any summary of the "plot", but it is basically a ride into the dark side of the US back in the 1970's.
Raoul Duke (Depp) is a kind of free-lance journalist on a mission to Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle-race, he brings his Samoan lawyer (Del Toro) since "he's going to need plenty of legal advice before this is over". They bring a suitcase full of drugs and alcohol, and head through the desert from Los Angeles towards Vegas. The film is both completely insane and hilariously funny. They dig ever deeper into their own minds and the suitcase of drugs, and from that ever more bizarre situations occur. The film has some "dull" moments too, but they are necessary to show the up's and down's of this kind of psychedelic journey. The hilarious quotes from this film are too many to bring up here; but the best one might be when the pair are on their way to some kind of family fair and they decide to sniff some ether before entering; "Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel".
Read the book, and then watch this. If you don't like it, you either have a complete lack of humour or just very bad taste in movies. The funniest film I own, without a doubt. 5 stars plus!
Rating: -
Gotta love it
Most drug movies are meant to be experienced under the influence, or when I watch this one, to watch late at night when you are very tired and have some feelings like a drug trip. Watching this movie for the first time a couple months ago, it didn't really connect what it was all about and where it came from. So then, I started reading some of Hunter Thompson's books and reading about his life, and then I watched the movie with more knowledge. I can't say how much I love this movie now knowing all that. The price on this is totally worth it because aside from being a collector's edition of this classic, it has bonus features that will put almost all other bonus features to shame. Buy this and buy this now
Rating: 
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funny in small doses: one-joke on a loop in a bad cartoon (But well acted)
Classic American novel about weird America and the harsh come down of the 60s generation receives mediocre film treatment. Criterion Collection must have added this film because it'll bring in funds for the truly good films that deserve to be added. That's what I've assumed when I see films like this or THE ROCK in their catalogue. The history of the making of this film with its long list of who's who in the film industry that tried bringing the cult novel to the screen is fascinating. Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone both wanted to direct but didn't make it happen. Actors Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando and the Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi duo were considered (you guess who would have played Duke and Gonzo out of each pair. LOL). John Cusack was a possibility as the Doctor at one point. Unfortunately this is far from the best movie they could have gotten out of the book. Alex Cox (SID AND NANCY) might well have proven to be the best director for the job, but had "creative differences" with Thompson. Too bad. One interesting idea to my mind was making an animated feature. Filmmaker/animator Ralph Bakshi and Thompson himself wanted to do it. As the story goes, they tried to get Hunter's girlfriend -who for some reason had the rights- to go with the idea, but failed. She was set on doing a live action. The idea was to do the style of Ralph Steadman's illustrations for the book. Bakshi: "I kept telling her that a live action would look like a bad cartoon but an animated version would be a great one. She had a tremendous disdain for animators because it wasn't considered the top of Hollywood. Hunter also could not make her change her mind. So she made the pic with Johnny Depp, and got the film I told her she would get - it would have been more real in a cartoon using Steadman's drawings." Well, I'm a fan of Terry Gilliam and Hunter Thompson did get behind him. And after Hunter met Depp he wanted nobody but Johnny Depp to play him. Depp hung out at Hunter's farm absorbing and learning about the character and Hunter shaved Depp's head. Who can deny that Johnny Depp was the best (of known actors) to play Dr. Gonzo? Hunter liked the performance. And Benicio del Toro is a riot as 300-pound Samoan Raoul Duke. Put on about 50 pounds for the role. The actors fated to play these characters finally do seem the most fit to have done it. There are nice moments when Depp/Dr. Gonzo narrates. The words of the "Wave Speech" are very memorable. It's the kind of writing that marked Thompson as a one of a kind, singularly gifted author. In the passage he perfectly captures the mood of his time, the sense of that cultural moment that the 60s and the hippie era was over. "You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
Amazon review says, "this ill-fated adaptation was thrust upon Terry Gilliam, whose formidable gifts as a visionary filmmaker were squandered on the seemingly unfilmable elements of Thompson's ether-fogged narrative. The result is a one-joke movie without the joke--an endless series of repetitive scenes involving rampant substance abuse and the hallucinogenic fallout of a road trip that's run crazily out of control". True enough. I'll watch bits and pieces for a laugh when I come across it on TV. It is funny in small doses.
Rating: -
Depp at his best
This is my all time favorite movie. I have seen it probably 40-50 times. Johnny Depp gives an inspiring performance and Bianco Del Toro is solid to say the least. I saw the movie, then read the book, and I must admit the book is much better. But heck, buy both of them! You will not be disappointed.
Rating: -
Good DVD edition of a great film adaptation
There's not much that I can type about the content of this disc's feature that hasn't been stated many times over. Gilliam's filmic version of HST's most popular book features enormous visuals and spot-on performances; it conveys the imagery and milieu of its source as capably as one could expect of it.
For an early DVD (this was released a decade ago, only a year into the format's commercial lifespan), this is a pretty decent effort. The audiovisual quality is quite good. The Dolby surround track is as vibrant as possible, despite the format's limitations. The visuals have been competently mastered from a pristine print.
The disc's special features are also impressive. The Spotlight on Location "making-of" featurette is much more visitable than most productions of its kind, as it's fairly substantial: excerpts from amusing interviews and production footage are capably implemented in a short running time. The two longest sequences of the film's deleted scenes are also of interest. The first of these is an amusing sequence directly adapted from the book's midsection; the second is weirdly ambiguous and unique to the screenplay, only utilizing a single famous line of dialogue taken from the book's last chapter (which was omitted from the shooting script). Both of these scenes were never processed in post-production, so the film stock is grainy and dark, with blinding high contrast. These cinematographic qualities bear a resemblance to those of '70s features, and the resulting effect seems to perfect the ambiance of this period piece. I almost wish that the entire movie had been produced this way! An unremarkable theatrical trailer is included, as are brief cast and filmmaker biographies that won't provide any information to fans that they don't already know. However, a pair of links in Terry Gilliam's bio access theatrical trailers for "Brazil" and "Twelve Monkeys."
I haven't viewed the Criterion edition of this movie, so I can't compare it to this.
Once again, anything Apple can make, the enterprising Dev Team can break: the brand-new firmware 2.2 has been jailbroken. QuickPwn should take care of everything, unless you're one of those unfortunate owners of the second-generation iPod touch, in which case you're out of luck at the moment. But everything else seems to be running fine—anybody here broken the new firmware yet? Let us know in the comments. [iPhone Dev, thanks Mehmet!]
