The film premiered in London on January 28, 2026, and was released in the United States by Amazon MGM Studios and internationally by Sony Pictures Releasing International on February 13, 2026. It received positive reviews from critics but was a box-office bomb, grossing $72.8 million worldwide on a budget of $90 million.
Plot
In Los Angeles,
Mike is an elusive and disciplined jewel thief, carefully planning
robberies to avoid violence and DNA evidence while escaping via U.S. Route 101.
Intercepting a diamond delivery carrying decoys, he steals $3 million
in genuine diamonds but is shaken after being grazed by an unexpected
bullet. He calls off a planned robbery in Santa Barbara, but his fence, Money, enlists volatile young biker Ormon instead.
LAPD
Detective Lou Lubesnick links the diamond theft to Mike's string of
unsolved robberies and suggests a lone suspect is responsible, but his
theory is dismissed. Preparing another heist, Mike pays Devon, a hacker,
for information on Sharon, a high-end insurance broker.
Long undervalued by her firm, Sharon is further frustrated when a new
colleague closes a lucrative deal with the wealthy Steven Monroe. After
Ormon violently carries out the Santa Barbara job, Mike cuts ties with
Money, who directs Ormon to intercept Mike's next heist.
The lonely Mike strikes up a romance with a stranger, Maya, after
she rear-ends his car. He realizes he is being tracked by Ormon, who
threatens Devon into revealing that Sharon is connected to Mike's plan.
Sharon rejects Mike's attempt to recruit her as an accomplice, and Mike
spots Ormon, confronting him after a high-speed chase; realizing he has
been sent by Money, Mike warns Ormon to stay away. Separating from his
unfaithful wife, Lou finds himself joining Sharon's yoga class. He
discovers the car Mike used in the diamond robbery, and a trace of blood
inside matches Mike's juvenile record with his birth name, James.
Denied a promotion yet again, Sharon agrees to help Mike.
Demanding a $3 million share, she provides inside information on an
illicit diamond purchase Monroe has arranged to make with $5.5 million
in cash, for his upcoming wedding at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
Lou is suspended for refusing to help cover up the police shooting of
another jewel thief but continues his investigation and tracks down
Mike's foster mother. Ormon viciously interrogates Sharon, who turns to
Lou for help and admits everything and quits her job after excoriating
her boss. Wary of Mike's secretive nature, Maya ends their relationship
after he reveals he will be leaving town.
The briefcase of diamonds arrives with a courier, and Mike takes
the place of his security guard, unaware Lou is posing as the courier
himself. Driving to the hotel, the two of them deliver the briefcase to
Monroe and his fiancée Adrienne in the wedding suite. Mike seizes the
cash at gunpoint, but Lou retrieves a gun from the case and reveals
himself as a police officer. Their standoff is interrupted by Ormon,
disguised as a hotel employee. Demanding the case, he shoots and wounds
Monroe, but Mike kills Ormon before he can shoot Lou. Allowing Mike to
escape empty-handed, Lou uses knowledge of financial crimes Monroe has
committed to force Monroe and his fiancée to support his story as he
frames Ormon for Mike's robberies.
Having stolen the decoy gems taken into evidence from Mike's
earlier heist, Lou swaps them with real diamonds from the briefcase,
which he gives to Sharon to start a new life. He discovers Mike has left
him his vintage green 1968 Camaro and Mike sends Maya a childhood
photo, asking her for a second chance.
Crime 101 premiered on January 28, 2026, in London and was
released in the United States on February 13, 2026, after initially
being set for January 23.[17][18][10][19] The film premiered on Amazon Prime Video on April 1, 2026, as a Prime Original movie.[20]
Reception
Box office
As of April 1, 2026, Crime 101 has grossed $37 million in the
United States and Canada, and $36 million in other territories, for a
worldwide total of $72 million.[5]
In the United States and Canada, Crime 101 was released alongside Wuthering Heights; Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die; and Goat, and was projected to gross $15–17 million from 3,161 theaters in its four-day opening weekend.[3] The film grossed $3.9million on its first day,[21] and went on to debut to $14.3 million (and $16 million over the four days), finishing third behind Wuthering Heights and Goat.[22] In its second weekend the film made $5.8 million, finishing in fourth.[23][24]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 180 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Crime 101
has studied the greats of L.A. Noir closely and shows its homework with
sleek action set pieces and vivid characterizations, receiving top
marks and graduating near the top of its class."[25]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[26] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Filming began in Puerto Rico in March 2009 and was released by FilmDistrict on October 28, 2011.[5] The film received mixed reviews and grossed just $30.1 million against its $45 million budget.
Plot
Paul Kemp is an author who has not been able to sell a book. He gets a job at a newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
There, he meets staff photographer Sala, who gets him acclimated and
tells him he thinks the newspaper will fold soon. Kemp checks into a
hotel, and while idling about on a boat in the sea, meets Chenault, who
is skinny-dipping while avoiding a Union Carbide party. Kemp is immediately smitten with her.
Kemp and Sala immediately go on a drinking binge, which earns
Kemp the enmity of his editor, E.J Lotterman. Kemp also meets Moburg, a
deadbeat reporter who cannot be fired. While waiting for an interview,
Kemp meets Hal Sanderson, a PR consultant flaunting a luxurious
lifestyle, who offers him a side job writing public relations material
for his latest venture. Sanderson is engaged to Chenault, who pretends
not to know Kemp.
Later, Kemp moves in with Sala, who also rooms with Moburg. Kemp
begins to see the poverty of San Juan, but Lotterman does not want him
to write about it, as it would be bad for tourism. Moburg returns with
leftover filters from a rum plant; they contain high-proof alcohol.
Moburg has been fired, and rants about killing Lotterman.
Kemp visits Sanderson and spies on him having sex with Chenault
in the sea. He meets Zimburger and Segurra, who are working with
Sanderson on his venture. Later, an inebriated Sala berates a restaurant
owner for refusing them service; Kemp senses the owner's hostility, so
Sala and he make a hasty retreat, pursued by angry locals. The police
arrive, break up the fight, and then throw Sala and Kemp in jail.
Sanderson bails them out.
The next day, Kemp meets with Sanderson's partners, who introduce
him to the venture. The plan is to build a resort on a "pristine"
island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Later Kemp is asked to pick up
Chenault from her house. They share a moment, but Kemp resists
temptation.
Zimburger takes Kemp and Sala to see the island, part of which is
still used as an artillery range by the US military. Then they head to St. Thomas for Carnival.
Kemp finds Chenault, and they wind up on Sanderson's boat. Sanderson
berates Kemp for involving Sala in the deal. At night, they go to a
club, and a drunk Chenault dances with local men to provoke Sanderson,
with whom she has been fighting. When Sanderson tries to intervene, he
is forcefully removed from the dancefloor by locals and led out of the
club by Kemp and Sala for his own safety. Chenault stays behind at the
club.
The next day, Chenault is gone, and Sanderson tells Kemp that
their business arrangement is over. When Sala and Kemp return home,
Moburg tells them that Lotterman has left and that the paper will go out
of business. He also sells them hallucinogens, which they take. Kemp
has an epiphany while under the influence, and resolves to write an
exposé on Sanderson's shady deals.
Lotterman returns, but will not publish Kemp's story. Chenault
shows up at Kemp's place after Sanderson disowns her. Out of spite,
Sanderson withdraws his bail, indicating that Kemp and Sala are now
wanted by the police. Moburg also tells them that Lotterman has closed
the paper. Kemp decides to print a last issue, telling the truth about
Lotterman and Sanderson as well as the stories Lotterman declined.
To make money to print the last edition, Kemp, Sala, and Moburg place a big cockfighting bet. They visit Papa Nebo, Moburg's intersex
witch doctor, to lay a blessing on Sala's prize cockerel. They win but
return to the office to find that the printing presses have been
confiscated.
Kemp continues his quest, leaving Puerto Rico on a sailboat. The
end credits explain that Kemp makes it back to New York, marries
Chenault, and becomes a successful journalist, finally finding his voice
as a writer.
Johnny Depp in November 2011, at a premiere of the film in Paris
Hunter S. Thompson wrote the novel The Rum Diary in 1961, but it was not published until 1998.[6] The independent production companies Shooting Gallery and SPi Films sought to adapt the novel into a film in 2000, and Johnny Depp was signed to star and to serve as executive producer. Nick Nolte was also signed to star alongside Depp.[7] The project did not move past the development stage.[6]
During this stage, the author became so frustrated as to fire off an
obscenity-laden letter calling the process a "waterhead fuckaround".[8]
Several actresses including Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley
reportedly expressed interest in the role of Chenault, however some
"had reservations regarding the nudity the role calls for". Actress Amber Heard was cast in the role.[9]Bruce Robinson joined to write the screenplay and to direct The Rum Diary.[7] In 2009, Depp's production company Infinitum Nihil took on the project with the financial backing of King and his production company GK Films. Principal photography began in Puerto Rico on March 25, 2009.[10] Composer Christopher Young signed on to compose the film's soundtrack.[11] Robinson had been sober for six-and-a-half years before he started writing the screenplay for The Rum Diary.[12] The filmmaker found himself suffering from writer's block. He started drinking a bottle of wine a day until he finished the script and then he quit drinking again.[citation needed]
About playing the character of Kemp, Depp compared and related it to his previous role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He said “The way I approached it was that the character of Paul Kemp is Raoul Duke
as he was learning to speak. It was like playing the same character,
only 15 years before. This guy’s got something; there’s an energy
burning underneath it, it’s just ready to pop up, shoot out.”
Reception
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes,
the film has an approval rating of 52% based on 166 reviews, with a
rating average of 5.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "It's
colorful and amiable enough, and Depp's heart is clearly in the right
place, but The Rum Diary fails to add sufficient focus to its rambling source material."[13]Metacritic,
which assigns a weighted average score to reviews, gives the film a
score of 56 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "mixed or
average reviews".[14] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a "C" on an A+ to F scale.[15]
Wyatt Williams, writing for Creative Loafing, argues that "the movie version amounts to Thompson's whole vision of journalism, glossed and made plain by Hollywood."[16]
Where the Buffalo Roam is a 1980 American semi-biographicalcomedy film which loosely depicts author Hunter S. Thompson's rise to fame in the 1970s and his relationship with Chicano attorney and activist Oscar "Zeta" Acosta. The film was produced and directed by Art Linson. Bill Murray portrayed Thompson[3] and Peter Boyle
portrayed Acosta, who is referred to in the film as Carl Lazlo, Esq. A
number of other names, places, and details of Thompson's life are also
changed.
The film opens in the Rocky Mountains on the Colorado ranch of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, a journalist furiously trying to finish a story about his former attorney and friend, Carl Lazlo, Esq. Thompson then flashes back to a series of exploits involving the author and his attorney.
In 1968, Thompson leaves hospital, later, Lazlo fights to stop a group of San Francisco youngsters from receiving harsh prison sentences for possession of marijuana. He convinces Thompson to write an article about it for Blast Magazine. Thompson's editor, Marty Lewis,
reminds Thompson that he has 19 hours to deadline. The judge hands out
stiff sentences to everyone; the last client is a young man who was
caught with 1 pound of marijuana and receives a five-year sentence.
Lazlo reacts by attacking the prosecuting attorney and is then jailed for contempt of court.
The magazine story about the trial is a sensation, but Thompson
does not hear from Lazlo until four years later, when Thompson is on
assignment covering Super Bowl VI in Los Angeles.[5]
Lazlo appears at Thompson's hotel and convinces him to abandon the
Super Bowl story and join his band of freedom fighters, which involves
smuggling weapons to an unnamed Latin American
country. Thompson goes along with Lazlo and the revolutionaries to a
remote airstrip where a small airplane is to be loaded with weapons, but
when a police helicopter finds them, Lazlo and his henchmen escape on
the plane while Thompson refuses to follow.
Thompson's fame and fortune continue. He is a hit on the college lecture circuit and covers the 1972 presidential election campaign. After being thrown off the journalist plane by The Candidate's press secretary, Thompson takes the crew plane and gives strait-laced journalist Harris from the Post a strong hallucinogenic
drug and steals his clothes and press credentials. At the next campaign
stop, in the airport bathroom, Thompson is able to use his disguise to
engage The Candidate in a conversation about the "Screwheads" and the
"Doomed".
Thompson, still posing as Harris, returns to the journalist
plane. Lazlo then appears, striding across the airport tarmac in a white
suit. He boards the plane and tries to convince his old friend to join
his socialist
paradise somewhere in the desert. After causing a disturbance, Thompson
and Lazlo are thrown off the plane, and Lazlo's papers that describe
the community are blown across the airport runway. Lazlo, presumably, is
not heard from again.
The action then returns to Thompson's cabin, just as the writer
puts the finishing touches on his story, explaining that he didn't go
along with Lazlo—or Nixon—because "it still hasn't gotten weird enough
for me."
In the late 1970s, film producer Thom Mount paid $100,000 for the film rights to the obituary of Chicano activist Oscar Zeta Acosta, "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat", written by Hunter S. Thompson.[6]
Thompson agreed to have it optioned without seeing a screenplay
figuring that the film would never get made, as the vastly more popular Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
had been optioned several times and was never made. In 1978, Art
Linson, who had previously produced four films, started planning to make
the film, which would be his directorial debut.[7]
Thompson remembered, "Then all of a sudden there was some moment of
terrible horror when I realized they were going to make the movie".[6] Linson asked illustrator Ralph Steadman
to create a poster for the film in the style of the illustrations he
had done for Thompson's articles. He used a drawing titled Spirit of Gonzo as the basis.[7]
Thompson met with the film's screenwriter John Kaye and felt that Kaye understood more than what was in the script, which he described as "bad, dumb, low-level, low rent".[6] Thompson admitted that he signed away having any kind of control so that he could not be blamed for the result.[6]
In the original script, Lazlo's surname was Mendoza but this was
changed after Nosotros, a group of Chicano actors and filmmakers,
threatened to create controversy if the character was played by Anglo
actor Peter Boyle. Just before principal photography was to begin, Bill
Murray became apprehensive about the project because of the shortcomings
of the script.[8]
Before principal photography began, Linson took a four-month crash course in directing.[7]
Thompson was eventually brought aboard the film's production as
"executive consultant", but claimed he had no substantial role other
than to have "wandered around and fired machine guns on the set".[6]
Kaye has claimed that Thompson and Murray changed parts of the script
during filming and, at that point, he chose to no longer be involved in
the production.[9]
Steadman observed Linson on the set and said that it was "pretty
obvious that he was in no frame of mind to catch the abandoned pure
essence of gonzo madness, which can only happen in uncontrolled
conditions".[7]
He also felt that Linson's "fanaticism for the subject he was trying to
portray was undoubtedly there, and his sincerity, too", but felt that
he was under the impression that the film was a runaway hit before he
had even begun filming it and therefore refused to take any chances with
the material. Steadman and Thompson spent time on the set and the
former talked to Murray about his impressions and observations of the
latter's mannerisms. Within two weeks of Thompson being on set, Murray
had transformed into him.[7]
During production, Murray and Thompson engaged in a series of
dangerous one-upmanship contests. "One day at Thompson's Aspen, Colorado
home, after many drinks and after much arguing over who could
out-Houdini whom, Thompson tied Billy to a chair and threw him into the
swimming pool. Billy nearly drowned before Thompson pulled him out."[10] Murray immersed himself in the character so deeply that when Saturday Night Live
started its fifth season, Murray was still in character as Thompson.
"In a classic case of the role overtaking the actor, Billy returned that
fall to Saturday Night so immersed in playing Hunter Thompson he
had virtually become Hunter Thompson, complete with long black
cigarette holder, dark glasses, and nasty habits. 'Billy,' said one of
the writers, echoing several others, 'was not Bill Murray, he was Hunter
Thompson. You couldn't talk to him without talking to Hunter
Thompson.'"[10]
Murray and Thompson were concerned with the film's lack of continuity and in early 1980 added voice-over narration.[8]
When the film was sneak-previewed in late March, the last two scenes
and narration were absent. Murray was outraged and the studio ended up
shooting a new ending. Three days before it was to be released in
theaters a press screening was suddenly canceled because of editing
problems.[8]
The film opened on April 25, 1980, in 464 theaters, earning
$1,750,593 in its opening weekend and more than $6.6 million for a total
lifetime gross.[11]
It has been panned critically for being a series of bizarre
episodes strung together rather than having a cohesive central plot.
Movie historian Leonard Maltin remarked that "Even Neil Young's
music score can't save this dreadful comedy, which will baffle those
who aren't familiar with Hunter S. Thompson's work and insult those who
are." Film critic Roger Ebert gave Where the Buffalo Roam
two stars out of four and said that "The movie fails to deal
convincingly with either Thompson's addictions or with his friendship
with Lazlo". However, Ebert also noted that "this is the kind of bad
movie that's almost worth seeing".[12]Gene Siskel awarded two-and-a-half stars out of four and declared that "Murray is fine at playing an angry clown, but Where the Buffalo Roam
should have given us much more than that. There's nothing in the film
that would make anyone want to read Hunter Thompson's words. And that's a
critical failure for a movie about a writer."[13] In his review for The Washington Post,
Gary Arnold wrote: "Well, the actors haven't transcended their
material. They're simply stuck with it. Murray and Boyle don't emerge as
a swell comic team, and they aren't funny as individuals either."[14] Jack Kroll wrote, in his review for Newsweek
magazine: "Screenwriter John Kaye has reduced Thompson's career to a
rubble of disjointed episodes, and the relentless mayhem becomes
tiresome chaos rather than liberating comic anarchy."[15] In his review for The Globe and Mail,
Paul McGrath wrote: "Murray is, nonetheless, the salvation of this
patched-together film", and felt that "the rest is mostly filler. The
story is so badly put together in the first place - and from there,
badly scripted - that the movie makes almost no impact outside the
infrequent hilarity".[16]Roger Angell of The New Yorker wrote, "The most surprising thing ... is how much of Thompson's tone gets into the picture".[17]
The film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes
lists the film as "rotten" with a 19% favorable rating among critics
based on 26 reviews. The consensus summarizes: "Bill Murray delivers a
noteworthy portrayal of Hunter S. Thompson, but Where the Buffalo Roam strains to get through its rambling narrative."[18]
Universal Studios quickly pulled it from distribution. Thompson hated the film,[10]
saying he liked Murray's performance but that he "was very disappointed
in the script. It sucks – a bad, dumb, low-level, low-rent script."[6]
Years later, Murray reflected on the film: "I rented a house in L.A.
with a guest house that Hunter lived in. I'd work all day and stay up
all night with him; I was strong in those days. I took on another
persona and that was tough to shake. I still have Hunter in me".[19]
Because of the high cost of music licensing, most VHS and all DVD
releases retained only the Neil Young score and the Creedence song
"Keep on Chooglin'", with the rest of the music replaced by generic
approximations of the original songs. The choice of songs for the DVD
version was somewhat anachronistic, featuring 1980s-style songs in a
1960s and 1970s setting.
In 2017, Shout! Factory
released a Blu-ray edition restoring the original songs, making this
the first home media version since the original VHS release to feature a
completely unaltered soundtrack.[20]
The soundtrack album was released by Backstreet Records in 1980 as a vinyl LP and included pieces of dialogue from the film. It has not been re-issued on CD.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was released on May 22, 1998, by Universal Pictures. The film received polarized reviews from critics and was a financial failure, but over the years it has since been regarded as a cult classic.[3][4]
Plot
In 1971, Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo speed across the Mojave Desert. Duke, under the influence of mescaline,
complains of a swarm of giant bats, and inventories their drug stash.
They pick up a young hitchhiker and explain their mission: Duke has been
assigned by a magazine to cover the Mint 400 motorcycle race in Las Vegas. They bought excessive drugs for the trip, and rented a red Chevrolet Impala convertible. The hitchhiker flees on foot at their behavior.
Trying to reach Vegas before the hitchhiker can go to the police,
Gonzo gives Duke part of a sheet of "Sunshine Acid" (ultra-purified LSD),
then informs him that there is little chance of making it before the
drug kicks in. By the time they reach the strip, Duke is in the full
throes of his trip and barely makes it through the hotel check-in,
hallucinating that the clerk is a moray eel and that his fellow bar patrons are draconian lizards.
The next day, Duke arrives at the race and heads out with his
photographer, Lacerda. Duke becomes irrational and believes that they
are in the middle of a battlefield, so he fires Lacerda and returns to
the hotel. After consuming more mescaline, as well as huffing diethyl ether, Duke and Gonzo arrive at the Bazooko Circus
casino but leave shortly afterwards, the chaotic atmosphere frightening
Gonzo. Back in the hotel room, Duke leaves Gonzo unattended, and tries
his luck at Big Six.
When Duke returns he finds that Gonzo, high on LSD, has trashed
the room, and is in the bathtub clothed, attempting to pull the tape
player in with him as he wants to hear the song better. He pleads with
Duke to throw the machine into the water when the song "White Rabbit"
peaks. Duke agrees, but instead throws a grapefruit at Gonzo's head
before running outside and locking Gonzo in the bathroom. Duke attempts
to type his reminiscences on hippie culture, and flashes back to San Francisco, 1965, where a hippie licks spilled LSD off his sleeve.
The next morning, Duke awakens to an exorbitant room service bill
and no sign of Gonzo (who has returned to Los Angeles while Duke
slept), and attempts to leave town. As he nears Baker, California,
a patrolman stops him for speeding, and advises him to sleep at a
nearby rest stop. Duke instead heads to a payphone and calls Gonzo,
learning that he has a suite in his name at the Flamingo Las Vegas
so he can cover a district attorney's convention on narcotics. Duke
checks into his suite, only to be met by an LSD-tripping Gonzo and a
young girl called Lucy, who Gonzo explains has come to Las Vegas to meet
Barbra Streisand, and that this was her first LSD trip. Duke convinces Gonzo to ditch Lucy in another hotel before her trip wears off.
Gonzo accompanies Duke to the convention, and the pair discreetly
snort cocaine as the guest speaker delivers a comically out-of-touch
speech about "marijuana addicts" before showing a brief film. Unable to
take it, Duke and Gonzo flee back to their room, only to discover that
Lucy has called. Their trips mostly over, Gonzo deals with Lucy over the
phone (pretending that he is being savagely beaten by thugs) as Duke
attempts to mellow out by trying some of Gonzo's stash of adrenochrome. Duke has a bad reaction to the drugs and is reduced to an incoherent mess before he blacks out.
After an unspecified amount of time passes, Duke wakes up to a
complete ruin of the once pristine suite. After discovering his tape
recorder, he attempts to remember what has happened. As he listens, he
has brief memories of the general mayhem that has taken place, including
Gonzo threatening a waitress at a diner,[5]
himself convincing a distraught cleaning woman that they are police
officers investigating a drug ring, and attempting to buy an orangutan.
Duke drops Gonzo off at the airport, driving right up to the airplane,
before returning to the hotel one last time to finish his article. He
then speeds back to Los Angeles.
Rhino Films began work on a film version as early as 1992.[8] Head of Production and the film's producer Stephen Nemeth originally wanted Lee Tamahori to direct, but he wasn't available until after the January 1997 start date.[8] Depp wanted Bruce Robinson to direct, but he was "unavailable... by choice".[9]
Rhino appealed to Thompson for an extension on the film rights but the
author and his lawyers denied the extension. Under pressure, Rhino
countered by green-lighting the film and hiring Alex Cox to direct within a few days.[8] According to Nemeth, Cox could "do it for a price, could do it quickly and could get this movie going in four months."[8]
Rhino hired Terry Gilliam
and was granted an extension from Thompson but only with the
stipulation that the director made the film. Rhino did not want to
commit to Gilliam in case he didn't work out.[8]
Thompson remembers, "They just kept asking for more [time]. I got kind
of agitated about it because I thought they were trying to put off doing
it. So I began to charge them more... I wanted to see the movie done,
once it got started."[8]
The studio threatened to make the film with Cox and without Depp and
del Toro. The two actors were upset when producer Laila Nabulsi told
them of Rhino's plans.[8]Universal Pictures
stepped in to distribute the film. Depp and Gilliam were paid $500,000
each but the director still did not have a firm deal in place. In
retaliation, Depp and Gilliam locked Rhino out of the set during
filming.[8]
Casting
During the initial development to get the film made, Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando were originally considered for the roles of Duke and Gonzo but they both grew too old.[10] Afterward, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were considered for the duo, but that fell apart after Belushi's death in 1982. John Malkovich was later considered for the role of Duke, but he grew too old as well. At one point Woody Harrelson was almost cast, but was already involved in the movie Palmetto
of the same year. After Thompson met with Depp, he became convinced
that no one else could play him. When Cox and Davies started writing the
screenplay, Depp and del Toro committed to starring in the film.[8]
Gilliam said in an interview that his films are actor-led, and the performance of the two characters in Fear and Loathing
is hyper realistic but truthful: "I am interested in real people in
bizarre, twisted environments that force them to act... to react
against."[11]
Dr. Gonzo is based on Thompson's friend Oscar Zeta Acosta, who disappeared sometime in 1974.[12]
Thompson changed Acosta's ethnic identity to "Samoan" to deflect
suspicion from Acosta, who was in trouble with the Los Angeles County
Bar Association. He was the "Chicano lawyer" notorious for his party
binges.
A red 1973 Chevrolet Caprice Convertible. Depp drove Thompson's red 1973 Caprice Convertible in preparation for the role
The lead actors undertook extraordinary preparations for their
respective roles. Del Toro gained more than 45 pounds (18 kg) in nine
weeks before filming began, eating 16 donuts a day,[13] and extensively researched Acosta's life.[12][14]
In the spring of 1997, Depp moved into the basement of Thompson's Owl
Farm home and lived there for four months, doing research for the role
as well as studying Thompson's habits and mannerisms.[15] The actor went through Thompson's original manuscript, mementos and notebooks that he kept during the actual trip.[15] Depp remembers, "He saved it all. Not only is [the book] true, but there's more. And it was worse."[16] Depp even traded his car for Thompson's red Chevrolet Capriceconvertible, known to fans as The Great Red Shark, and drove it around California during his preparation for the role.[17]
Many of the costumes that Depp wears in the film are genuine articles
of clothing that he borrowed from Thompson, who himself shaved Depp's
head to match his own natural male pattern baldness.[15] Other props, such as Duke's cigarette filter
(a TarGard Permanent Filter System), Hawaiian shirts, hats, a patchwork
jacket, a silver medallion (given to him by Oscar Acosta) and IDs, also
belonged to Thompson.[17]
Writing
Cox started writing the screenplay with Tod Davies, a UCLA
Thompson scholar. During pre-production, Cox and producer Laila Nabulsi
had "creative differences" and she forced Rhino to choose between her
and Cox.[8]
She had an arrangement with Thompson to produce the film and the studio
fired Cox and paid him $60,000 in script fees. Thompson's disapproval
of the Cox/Davies script treatment is documented in the film Breakfast with Hunter.
The decision was made to not use the Cox/Davies script, which gave Gilliam only ten days to write another.[18]
Gilliam has stated in an interview "When we were writing the script, we
really tried not to invent anything. We sort of cannibalized the book."[11] The director enlisted the help of Tony Grisoni
and they wrote the script at Gilliam's home in May 1997. Grisoni
remembers, "I'd sit at the keyboard, and we'd talk and talk and I'd keep
typing."[18]
One of the most important scenes from the book that Gilliam wanted to
put in the film was the confrontation between Duke and Dr. Gonzo and the
waitress of the North Star Coffee Lounge. The director said, "This is
two guys who have gone beyond the pale, this is unforgivable – that
scene, it's ugly. My approach, rather than to throw it out, was to make
that scene the low point."[19]
Initially, the studio wanted Gilliam to update the book for the
1990s, which he considered, "And then I looked at the film and said,
'No, that's apologizing. I don't want to apologize for this thing. It is
what it is.' It's an artifact. If it's an accurate representation of
that book, which I thought was an accurate representation of a
particular time and place and people."[20] Gilliam, while speaking to Sight & Sound
magazine, highlighted if he had updated the movie to the 1990s it would
just "be a story about two people going to excess". Keeping it set in
the 70's, using the backdrop of the Vietnam War and a perceived loss of the American dream, offers reasoning to the characters' actions.[21]
Writers credit dispute with WGA
When the film approached release, Gilliam learned that the Writers Guild of America
(WGA) would not allow Cox and Davies to be removed from the credits
even though none of their material was used in the production of the
film. According to WGA rules, Gilliam and Grisoni had to prove that they
wrote 60% of their script. The director said, "But there have been at
least five previous attempts at adapting the book, and they all come
from the book. They all use the same scenes."[22]
Gilliam remarked in an interview, "The end result was we didn't exist.
As a director, I was automatically deemed a 'production executive' by
the guild and, by definition, discriminated against. But for Tony to go
without any credit would be really unfair."[23]
David Kanter, agent for Cox and Davies, argued, "About 60 percent of
the decisions they made on what stays in from the book are in the film –
as well as their attitude of wide-eyed anarchy."[23]
According to the audio commentary by Gilliam on the Criterion
Collection DVD, during the period where it appeared that only Cox and
Davies would be credited for the screenplay, the film was to begin with a
short scene in which it is explained that no matter what is said in the
credits, no writers were actually involved in the making of the film.
When this changed in early May 1998 after the WGA revised its decision
and gave credit to Gilliam and Grisoni first and Cox and Davies second,
the short was not needed.[19] Angered over having to share credit, Gilliam publicly burned his WGA card at a 22 May book signing on Broadway.[24][19]
Filming
According to Gilliam, there was no firm budget in place when filming started.[25]
He felt that it was not a well-organized film and said, "Certain people
didn't... I'm not going to name names but it was a strange film, like
one leg was shorter than the other. There was all sorts of chaos."[18] While Depp was on location in Los Angeles, he got a phone call from comedian Bill Murray who had played Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam.
He warned Depp, "Be careful or you'll find yourself ten years from now
still doing him… Make sure your next role is some drastically different
guy."[26]
Shooting on location in Las Vegas began on 3 August 1997 and
lasted 56 days. The production ran into problems when they wanted to
shoot in a casino. They were only allowed to film between two and six in
the morning, given only six tables to put extras around, and insisted
that the extras really gamble.[18] Exterior shots of the Bazooko Casino were filmed in front of the Stardust hotel/casino with the interiors constructed with a Warner Bros. Hollywood soundstage.[27] To get the period look of Vegas in the 1970s, Gilliam and cinematographer Nicola Pecorini used rear-projection footage from the old television show, Vega$. According to the cinematographer, this footage heightened the film's "already otherworldly tone an extra notch."[27]
Cinematography
Pecorini was hired based on an audition reel he sent Gilliam that
made fun of the fact that he had only one eye (he lost the other to
retinal cancer).[27] According to Pecorini, the look of the film was influenced by the paintings of Robert Yarber that are "very hallucinatory: the paintings use all kinds of neon colors, and the light sources don't necessarily make sense."[27] According to Gilliam, they used him as a guide "While mixing our palette of deeply disturbing fluorescent colors."[28]
For the desert scenes, Pecorini wanted a specific, undefined
quality without a real horizon to convey the notion that the landscape
never ended and to emphasize "a certain kind of unreality outside the
characters' car, because everything that matters to them is within the
Red Shark."[27]
For the scene where Duke hallucinates a lounge full of lizards, the
production was supposed to have 25 animatronic reptiles but they only
received seven or eight.[27] The production used motion-control
techniques to make it look like they had a whole room of them and made
multiple passes with the cameras outfitting the lizards with different
costumes each time.[27]
During production, it was Gilliam's intention that it should feel
like a drug trip from beginning to end. He said in an interview, "We
start out at full speed and it's WOOOO! The drug kicks in and you're on
speed! Whoah! You get the buzz – it's crazy, it's outrageous, the
carpet's moving and everybody's laughing and having a great time. But
then, ever so slowly, the walls start closing in and it's like you're
never going to get out of this fucking place. It's an ugly nightmare and
there's no escape."[17]
To convey the effects of the various drugs, Gilliam and Pecorini
assembled a list of "phases" that detailed the "cinematic qualities" of
each drug consumed.[27] For ether, Pecorini said they used a "loose depth of field; everything becomes non-defined"; for adrenochrome, "everything gets narrow and claustrophobic, move closer with lens"; mescaline was simulated by having "colors melt into each other, flares with no sources, play with color temperatures"; for amyl nitrite, the "perception of light gets very uneven, light levels increase and decrease during the shots"; and for LSD, "everything extremely wide, hallucinations via morphs, shapes, colors, and sound."[27]
Pecorini and Gilliam decided they wanted the film to be shot
wide-angle but because of the small budget they couldn't afford the
downfalls of anamorphic lenses so they paired the Arriflex 535,[29] and the Arri 35-iii with a set of Zeiss Standard Primes and Kodak
250D Vision 5246 photochemical filmstock in order to achieve the
saturated look and the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio the film has.[30]
The Rolling Stones song "Jumping Jack Flash"
is heard at the conclusion of the film as Thompson drives out of Las
Vegas and back to Los Angeles. Gilliam could not pay the $300,000 (half
of the soundtrack budget) needed for the rights to "Sympathy for the Devil" (also by The Rolling Stones), which plays a prominent role in the book.[8]
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas underwent preview test screenings
– a process that Gilliam does not enjoy. "I always get very tense in
those (test screenings), because I'm ready to fight. I know the pressure
from the studio is, 'somebody didn't like that, change it!'"[16]
The filmmaker said that it was important to him that Thompson like the
film and recalls the writer's reaction at a screening, "Hunter watched
it for the first time at the premiere and he was making all this fucking
noise! Apparently it all came flooding back to him, he was reliving the
whole trip! He was yelling out and jumping on his seat like it was a
roller coaster, ducking and diving, shouting 'SHIT! LOOK OUT! GODDAMN
BATS!' That was fantastic – if he thought we'd captured it, then we must
have done it!"[17]
Thompson himself stated, "Yeah, I liked it. It's not my show, but I
appreciated it. Depp did a hell of a job. His narration is what really
held the film together, I think. If you hadn't had that, it would have
just been a series of wild scenes."[31]
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas debuted at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival[32]
and Gilliam said, "I'm curious about the reaction ... If I'm going to
be disappointed, it's because it doesn't make any waves, that people are
not outraged."[33]
Home media
By the time Fear and Loathing was released as a Criterion CollectionDVD in 2003, Thompson showed his approval of the Gilliam version by recording a full-length audio commentary for the film and participating in several DVD special features.[34]
On an audio commentary
track in the Criterion edition of the DVD, Gilliam expresses great
pride in the film and says it was one of the few times where he did not
have to fight extensively with the studio during the filming.[35]
Gilliam chalks this up to the fact that many of the studio executives
read Thompson's book in their youth and understood it could not be made
into a conventional Hollywood film. He expresses frustration with the
advertising campaign used during its initial release, which he says
tried to sell it as wacky comedy.[35] The film was released by Universal Studios on HD DVD and Blu-ray; Criterion released the film on Blu-ray on 26 April 2011, and on Ultra HD Blu-ray on 4 June 2024.[36]
Reception
Box office
The film opened in wide release
on 22 May 1998 and grossed $3.3 million in 1,126 theaters on its first
weekend. The film went on to gross $10.6 million, well below its budget
of $18.5 million.[2] The movie reignited interest in Thompson's novel. Vintage Press
reported an initial reprint of 100,000 copies to tie in with the film's
release, but demand was higher than expected and the novel was
reprinted a further five times.[37]
Critical response
Gilliam wanted to provoke strong reactions to his film as he said in
an interview, "I want it to be seen as one of the great movies of all
time, and one of the most hated movies of all time."[16]Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas polarized critics; on review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes,
the film holds an approval rating of 51% based on 71 reviews. The
website's critical consensus reads, "Visually creative, but also
aimless, repetitive, and devoid of character development."[38] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 41 based 19 reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[39] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[40]
In The New York Times, Stephen Holden
wrote, "Even the most precise cinematic realizations of Mr. Thompson's
images don't begin to match the surreal ferocity of the author's
language."[41]Stephen Hunter, in his review for The Washington Post,
wrote, "It tells no story at all. Little episodes of no particular
import come and go...But the movie is too grotesque to be entered
emotionally."[42] Mike Clark, of USA Today, found the film "simply unwatchable."[43] In The Guardian, Gaby Wood
wrote: "After a while, though, the ups and downs don't come frequently
enough even for the audience, and there's an element of the tedium
usually found in someone else's druggy experiences."[44]Roger Ebert found the film disgraceful, giving it one star out of four and calling it:
a
horrible mess of a movie, without shape, trajectory or purpose–a one
joke movie, if it had one joke. The two characters wander witlessly past
the bizarre backdrops of Las Vegas (some real, some hallucinated, all
interchangeable) while zonked out of their minds. Humor depends on
attitude. Beyond a certain point, you don't have an attitude, you simply
inhabit a state.[45]
Gene Siskel's
"thumbs-up" review at the time also noted the film successfully
captured the book's themes into film, adding "What the film is about and
what the book is about is using Las Vegas as a metaphor for – or a
location for – the worst of America, the extremes of America, the money
obsession, the visual vulgarity of America."[46] Michael O'Sullivan gave the film a positive review in The Washington Post,
writing "What elevates the tale from being a mere drug chronicle is the
same thing that lifted the book into the realm of literature. It's the
sense that Gilliam, like Thompson, is always totally in command of the
medium, while abandoning himself utterly to unpredictable forces beyond
his control."[47]Empire magazine voted the film the 469th greatest film in their "500 Greatest Movies of All Time" list.[48]Leonard Maltin categorized it as a BOMB: "Excruciating adaptation...
simply one monotonous, painfully long drug trip—replete with closeups
of vomit and swooping camera movements at any and every opportunity."[49]
Andrew Johnston, writing in Time Out New York, observed: "Fear
is really a Rorschach test of a movie – some people will see a godawful
mess, rendered inaccessible by the stumbling handheld camera and Depp's
nearly incomprehensible narration. Others will see a freewheeling
comedy, a thinking person's Cheech and Chong
film. It all depends on your mood, expectations and state of mind (for
the record, I was stone sober and basically enjoyed myself)."[50]
Status
The film has been re-screened at various cinemas such as The Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, London, and a special screening from original VHS tape at Swordtail Studio London in 2016.[51]
The increased attention for the film has also led some news
outlets to reconsider the mixed original reception of the film; Scott
Tobias of The A.V. Club argued in his more recent review of the film that it "would have had a greater impact had it been produced at the time, when Brewster McCloud proved that anything was possible, but short of a time machine, Gilliam does what he can to bring the era back to life."[52]
However, Depp and Del Toro were also nominated by the Stinkers Bad Movie Awards
for Worst On-Screen Couple, and during the same awards Del Toro's
portrayal of Dr. Gonzo was also nominated for the Worst Supporting
Actor.[53]
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