Film adaptations are tough. Adapting a Hunter Thompson book is even more so. I haven't read the book so can't say how much it stays true to it but something tells me that the story has been tinkered upon to fit the Hollywood mold. Last 20 minutes of the film is a total let down. Before I get to that:
The film has some amazing moments. Johnny Depp is completely in his element, blurting out insightful dialogue with total nonchalance in a way that makes those thoughts even more hard hitting. Besides, it's a relief to see him without a pirate/period barber/fantasy freak costume. The sets, locations, costumes, characters.. everything reeks of decay and that helps you enter the Hunter Thompson world instantly. Thompson wrote this book during the start of his career a phase when he was either getting fired for stupid reasons or trying out exotic substances, in short, he was stumbling through life. Much of this movie is in the same vein and that's refreshing to watch. It's a pace which allows you to breathe and take it all in. It makes you not care about where the story is going, you just want to be there in the moment. The restaurant sequence where Sala refuses to budge without having his steak and end up running for his dear life was the best of the movie. Few movies nowadays dare to take that pace because they are scared senseless that the audience will run away before the next action sequence.
The restaurant sequence and many such lackadaisical digressions demonstrate that Kemp (much like Thompson in his early days) was willing to go where fate takes him rather than worrying about how he's going to change the world. Yes there was this desire to find his voice, 'I've got no voice. I don't know how to write like me', he goes. But going from a degenerate journalist to a man on a mission to save nature before you could say 'Gonzo' was too much to digest. Add a forced love story to the mix and it's a buzz-kill.
And the closing line which says 'end of one story is the beginning of another' is just the kind of spoon-feeding many don't need. This is a story written by a man who bent all rules in the sacred book of journalism, Depp and Co. could have bent some too by refusing to force a meaning in the madness we called Thompson.
www.AbhishekBhatt.com
The film has some amazing moments. Johnny Depp is completely in his element, blurting out insightful dialogue with total nonchalance in a way that makes those thoughts even more hard hitting. Besides, it's a relief to see him without a pirate/period barber/fantasy freak costume. The sets, locations, costumes, characters.. everything reeks of decay and that helps you enter the Hunter Thompson world instantly. Thompson wrote this book during the start of his career a phase when he was either getting fired for stupid reasons or trying out exotic substances, in short, he was stumbling through life. Much of this movie is in the same vein and that's refreshing to watch. It's a pace which allows you to breathe and take it all in. It makes you not care about where the story is going, you just want to be there in the moment. The restaurant sequence where Sala refuses to budge without having his steak and end up running for his dear life was the best of the movie. Few movies nowadays dare to take that pace because they are scared senseless that the audience will run away before the next action sequence.
The restaurant sequence and many such lackadaisical digressions demonstrate that Kemp (much like Thompson in his early days) was willing to go where fate takes him rather than worrying about how he's going to change the world. Yes there was this desire to find his voice, 'I've got no voice. I don't know how to write like me', he goes. But going from a degenerate journalist to a man on a mission to save nature before you could say 'Gonzo' was too much to digest. Add a forced love story to the mix and it's a buzz-kill.
And the closing line which says 'end of one story is the beginning of another' is just the kind of spoon-feeding many don't need. This is a story written by a man who bent all rules in the sacred book of journalism, Depp and Co. could have bent some too by refusing to force a meaning in the madness we called Thompson.
www.AbhishekBhatt.com
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