Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance, " goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts.
A competent but unsurprising celebrity documentary that benefits enormously from its subject—Hunter S. Thompson is inherently fascinating, and the archival material (home movies, audiotapes, unpublished manuscripts) adds genuine value. The film covers his heyday with energy and affection but follows a fairly conventional talking-heads-plus-archival-footage structure. The performances from interview subjects (including Thompson's contemporaries and ex-wives) are candid and revealing but not exceptional. Cinematography is functional documentary work with some stylistic flair borrowed from Thompson's own gonzo aesthetic. Novelty is limited by the genre's predictability despite Thompson himself being a singular figure. The ending, like many biopics of this era that must address a subject's decline and death, feels somewhat deflating and rushed rather than resonant.