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Dir. Alex Gibney
Rating: 7.9 | 0 User Reviews | Send to Friend
Seemingly, there was a lot that Hunter S. Thompson shared with the world about himself through his highly personal and opinionated works. Still, he maintained a mystery so baffling that he himself could not discern his true character. Alex Gibney’s documentary attempts to shed some light on a man who would go on to influence a generation. Backed by the narration of Johnny Depp -- who famously portrayed the good Doctor in Terry Gilliam's Ribald film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- the film first offers a vision of Thompson with the Hell's Angels and all of the accompanying press furor after the publication of his first nonfiction book detailing the activities of the biker gang. The doc is also loaded with home footage, along with long-lost interviews and clips from the movies, which Thompson’s work inspired. From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, Thompson was nearly omnipresent in the tumultuous late-'60s and early-'70s, spending his time in San Francisco and basking in the glory of failed political movements. From the riots in Chicago and the death of the hippies to the presidency of Nixon, those who loved Thompson were inspired and comforted by his sense of urgency, despite his manic personality. Perhaps, the most moving of the interviews Gibney conducts involve Thompson's first wife, who goes to great pains to explain the duality of the man she loved. The film isn't necessarily for those already obsessed with Thompson -- though they will surely be out in force -- but rather the skeptics, whose minds Gibney hopes will be changed by this humanizing portrait of a character so outlandish the only way he knew how to get off the edge was to go over it.
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