- Studio: Magnolia Pictures
- Release Date: Jul 4, 2008
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91The movie also captures Thompson's tragedy: the haze of drugs and bad writing that consumed him for no less than his last 30 years.
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90A biographical documentary doesn't get any better than this.
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90The July 4th release is fitting, for Thompson was a true patriot. His longstanding association with the counterculture notwithstanding, Thompson loved this country and the things it once stood for, and his voice is sorely missed today, and whether you were a fan of his work or not, you'll find Gonzo well worth your time.
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90Gibney's immensely funny and sad new motion picture Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson -- the "Dr." was a mail-order divinity degree -- is principally intended to rehabilitate Thompson and introduce his work to a new audience.
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90It is to Mr. Gibney's great credit that while he pays due attention to the outsize, cartoonish celebrity persona Thompson fell back on when his literary powers began to wane, this film concentrates on the bold, innovative journalism that secured Thompson's reputation and assures his immortality.
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88Johnny Depp, who paid for the 2005 funeral in which Thompson's ashes were fired out of a cannon, narrates with just the right mix of awe and impertinence.
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88It leaves you wondering, how was it that so many people liked this man who does not seem to have liked himself?
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88A mesmerizing look at the mythic quality and anarchic spirit of the irreverent and rabble-rousing journalist.
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80A tender, even-tempered elegy to a writer who at his peak could ingest staggering (literally) amounts of drugs and alcohol and transform, like Popeye after a can of spinach, into a superhuman version of himself--more trenchant, more cutting, more hilarious than any political journalist before or since.
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80Subject's career being inextricably tied to two extremely entertaining U.S. decades, Gonzo has a wealth of delightful archival footage to draw on, both directly involving Thompson and evoking the cultural landscape around him.
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Like Thompson's work itself, it sometimes feels like a smoke screen, a colorful but distracting, distracted set of pretenses hiding as much as they reveal.
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75Johnny Depp, who portrayed Thompson's alter-ego in Gilliam's film, provides the narration. If there's hagiography here, it's counterbalanced by biographical truth.
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75The film is thorough and entertaining. It's enthusiastic about his contributions, but it's no hagiography, and it serves as both a celebration and a cautionary tale.
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75This handsomely mounted documentary takes the same, indulgent tone that at lot of Thompson's friends and associates seem to have had.
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75An amused and affectionate look at the writer who formed a crucial link between the New Journalism of the 1960s and today's blogosphere.
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75The film is annoyingly sketchy on Thompson's early years and education, and it spends so much time on his coverage of the 1972 presidential election and his own race for sheriff of Aspen, Colo., that major aspects of his career get short shrift or go unmentioned.
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75It's more Thompson-for-beginners than an exhaustive inquiry, but as introductions go, it's thorough and thoughtful.
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While the evidence of his spotty post-1970s work is hard to refute, Gonzo proves what a vapid, overvalued commodity edginess is, championing Thompson's best work for brass-tacks insight more than brass-balled outrage.
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70Feels a little soft and boomer-indulgent with its 10,000th rehash of the Nixon years and its soundtrack of trite 60s anthems.
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There's a nagging sense throughout Gonzo that, despite his late-life decline into caricature, Thompson was too complex, too self-mythologized, too big, too American to ever fit onscreen – especially in a movie aiming for "objectivity," which was, for Thompson, the worst of all possible words.
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67Because there was anarchy and randomness in Thompson's life and work, you find it in Gonzo.
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67We are treated to all manner of worshipy recollections from a stable of Thompson's admirers, including, believe it or not, Patrick Buchanan and James Baker. Who said gonzo politics doesn't make for strange bedfellows?
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63It may be impossible to make an uninteresting documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, but is it unfair to ask Gonzo for more Hunter and less Jimmy Carter?
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63Thompson - his brilliance, his self-destruction, and the ground he broke - is always at the center, but the film occasionally loses its focus.
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63So I was curious to see why we needed a two-hour documentary about the three-hit wonder who cast away his career halfway through life and coasted on celebrity status for 30 years. After seeing Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, I'm still not convinced we do.
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60I think Gonzo, which is wonderfully rich in historical footage, needs some skeptics, some voices suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Thompson was part of the problem, not the solution, when America flirted briefly with revolution (or was it merely anarchy?), leaving consequences that continue to resonate today -- and not always to our advantage.
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50Instead 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.
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50It seems to celebrate him more for his attitude, his fashionably leftist politics, his fame and his friendships than for any meaningful accomplishment.
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TomW.9Absolutely brilliant shows insight to work of Thompson and its impact on our society.
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JayHiggins6