If Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream is a testament to the 21st Century drug abuser, then Terry Gilliam’s Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas is a document of the drug movement in the early 1970's during the end of the hippie revolution. Fear And Loathing, based on the book by Hunter S Thompson, follows the adventures of Raoul Duke (the alter-ego of Hunter S Thompson, played by Depp) and Oscar Zeta Ocosta (Del Toro) a.k.a. Dr. Gonzo and their search for the American Dream. Their search takes them to Las Vegas and their journey becomes a drug-induced decent into hell backlit by the lights of the Vegas Strip.

The characters’ trip to Las Vegas becomes a mental "trip" and through their journeys Duke and Gonzo meet an assorted array of people. The people they meet come to represent different segments of the population of America. They first pick up a hitchhiker who represents the youth movement, a scared generation journeying to an unknown end. The police who Duke and Gonzo run into on numerous occasions represent a fake authority because none of the police can seem to catch the two. The young girl (Christina Ricci) represents the innocence lost by the 60's generation. The waitress Duke and Gonzo terrorize represents the working class. Different facets of America all represented and viewed through drug-influenced eyes. Duke and Gonzo are hanging onto the proverbial balloon getting endlessly higher. The conclusion which Duke eventually comes to is the time of the 60's generation has run up and its time to let go of the rising balloon. The problem with that is Duke and the entire 60's generation have gotten too high to let go and gotten too used to hanging on that balloon. The whole 60's revolution was sticking it the nearly every convention America had to offer at the time. In the end, Duke has been on drugs for so long that he has missed the end of the revolution, Duke realizes this and finally he knows its over. Ultimately the movie is a search for the American Dream by way of Las Vegas viewed as a warped Hell where the neon lights are the fires and the hallucinations is the reality.