Certainly there is a lot to admire about Thompson, a gifted writer who, along with
And "Gonzo," directed by Alex Gibney, is filled to the top with admiring celebrities -- including Wolfe, singer
But Thompson was not just a writer. He created a hard-drinking, drug-ingesting persona for himself; as someone observes about his "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," he made being way out of control his topic. In the end, he became as much a prisoner of that facade as any square trapped in a nine-to-five job.
Gibney knows this and pays lip service to it, but the director of "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" and "Taxi to the Dark Side" seems to have parked his skepticism at the door for this project. Instead of pushing for tough answers to difficult questions, this film is content to mythologize Thompson's bad-boy behavior, celebrating things like his willingness to drink a bottle of bourbon a day and go hunting with a submachine gun.
The most interesting parts of "Gonzo" are its explorations of Thompson's early days. We learn that he grew up in
But too much time in this overly long film is spent on minutiae: Does anyone really care at this point how Thompson felt about Ed Muskie or Thomas Eagleton? And "Gonzo" would have benefited from some attempt to analyze why so much of our culture is fascinated by the reckless behavior that its subject epitomized. There's a bit of Thompson in
kenneth.turan@latimes.com
"Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson." Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes. In limited release.
