This is a movie where Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow teams up with a fat Mexican dude named Benicio Del Toro, and these two drive to Las Vegas on 700 different types of drugs to cover a motorcycle race for a magazine. I believe Bill Murray played this same Ichabod character back in the ’80s based on the real guy, Hunter S. Thompson who wrote the book.
Now as you know I’m sober as the Pope during Lent, but I can still appreciate a good drug movie at least as long as it’s this good. The filmatist behind this one, Terry Gilliam, creates a nightmare Las Vegas world where hallucinations of dripping floors and cocktail drinking lizards and nippled buffaloes becomes reality. And the real trip is in the last act of the picture when suddenly Ichabod wakes up in the most trashed hotel room of all time – it looks like a junkyard on top of a lagoon – and tries to remember what happened. All the sudden he has an alligator tail and he’s dictating to a tape recorder duct taped to his mouth. I mean I think we can all relate to that type of morning in my opinion.
The reason this picture works is because of the two actors, Ichabod and Benicio, who are both funny and crazy but likable. Well, at least Ichabod is likable. My favorite scene is when Benicio pulls a knife on some people in an elevator and later declares that the woman fell in love with him, he could tell by the eye contact. “It’s serious, man.” I mean these are two crazy motherfuckers, you can’t believe the shit they are doing, and it seems like they just don’t know how to be any other way. I like the part where Ichabod walks into a police convention and the movie does an x-ray number on his suitcase to remind us that it is filled with every illegal drug ever invented.
But I guess what I really liked about this one is the spirit behind this guy trying to cover a motorcycle race in true Outlaw fashion. I mean this motherfucker is not looking for the same thing the other reporters are. He doesn’t even know shit about the bikes and he doesn’t watch much of the race, all he knows for sure is that it started. He puts himself into the story and tries to learn something about people and American culture and how the times are a changin and what not. In other words if this dude was a film critic he would NOT be allowed in the OFCS.
I admire anyone who wants to approach something from a new angle and comes out with a halfway decent product. And this book the dude wrote is an American classic thank you very much.
This is the end of the review now sorry
November 6th, 2009 at 10:38 am
This review is not so good meester Vern. Fear and Loathing is my 3rd favourite movie of all time and, snakes in the carpet slightly too hokey aside, by far the most accurate acid representation too (there was a time I was pounding 20 trips a month…man good times, but don’t do drugs kids k thx bye).
Quick aside, I remember reading my favourite person Manson (Marilyn) was at a party and Thompson was doing a reading from his book for him, Depp, Rourke and Del Toro and I thought fuck me – undoubtedly the coolest room in the history of rooms, readings, and parties. Risked critical cool mass or something surely. Challenge anyone to name a gathering of 5 people who are cooler than this group.
Man, I think you owe it to yourself to rewatch this film and if you ever do, scrap this half-arse review and share some of that lateral insight you got. Okay, you got benefit of personal laughs and mebbe dun needa share, but dun got my moneys worth from this one.
Hmm.. mebbe you got point…mebbe there is not enough going on for people not interested in drugs. At least you could talk about the chick though. There’s some really fucking nasty stuff going on there.
Fuck people, and fuck this review.
Ta for other stuff though, I dun wanna be an asshole or anything. Just saying fuck you.