good back-story, and good acting

Excellent but underrated film

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Hunter Thompson's gift was to fall gracefully into chaos. He didn't always do well in this, and rarely do movies that reference him in any way.You can only approach this world of righteous anarchy in one of two ways. You can stand outside it and draw it as informed disorder, or you can try to go with the flow scribbling blind, surfing unseen cultural fields that you make visible. Only Gilliam with Depp has been able to dissolve Gonzo with value. All else who try fall off their skateboards.This takes the other route: straight interviews and archival footage, assembled as if it really could say something about what happened. The result is so off the mark that it flattens a whole era, erases the very spidery traces that Thompson teased into visibility. This is a film that destroys its subject because of a vast misunderstanding. It is easy to do, since the man himself was too doltish to know what he did when it worked.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I really liked this movie. It's basically like watching one of those history channel shows about the 60's, and as the thing proceeds you see all the major events and the material nicely accented by the personal story of Hunter S. Thompson. It's more like the craze years : a personal story than a documentary on Hunter S. Thompson.As for the documentary aspect about the late father of Gonzo which many fan's that part of the plot is also carried out quite well. I think honestly they go a little overboard about how much influence the guy had, but the story is at its heart honest. The producers make Hunter into more of a tragic hero, a man consumed by his and others need for him to be a generational icon and then the story of both the world and more importantly the man coming to terms with stark reality. Honestly, the movie is great. I would recommend it to anyone.

I saw this inserted in a festival. Festivals are great occasions. There is a mood in the air, which invites us to see new things, ambitious ones. Most of the time, it must be said, i see failures, some glorious, others pure crap. But the possibility to see new surprise life altering creations compensates for all the eventually boring proofs we might have to endure. This little documentary is something of an exception in these types i described.As a film in itself it has little value. It's a collection of photographs, testimonies, old videos and testimonies made for the documentary, with a plus, Johnny Depp narrating Thompson. It is tailored like the serial documentaries the Discovery or History channel usually makes. But i actually enjoyed it. For one reason, i was ignorant about many of the aspects in his life, namely the politic involvements, which is a contradiction, among others, in the life of a counter-culture icon.Anyway, it's the very facts of Thompson's life that move the whole thing, and sparks the whole interest this may have. Because there was something that displeased me, a kind of formal contradiction which nevertheless is fun to find: H.Thompson was important as a writer, fundamentally because he broke forms, and in the process created a genre on its own. His kind of writing is essentially visual, which means it's also potentially cinematic - Gillian understood this, but in 'Fear and Loathing...' he was either to literal in his interpretation, or to attached to his own vision, so though he made a good piece, he was not fully faithful to Thompson. The visual quality of his writings can be tested in this documentary, whenever Depp reads. It's powerful, and probably more effective than any of the footage used. There lies the contradiction. The documentary is vulgar, it uses a worn out formula for serial documentaries, equivalents to the kind of dull journalistic writing Thompson wanted to evade. See my point?So, probably, Hunter will last for what he wrote, not for what he 'was'. After all, it's not uncommon or specially thrilling the kind of things he effectively did. Though that provided most of the juice and energy he puts in his writings, it's not the orgies, or the guns, or the acids that make his life worth knowing.Nevertheless, Thompson would perfectly incarnate the mood of a film festival. That's a complement.My opinion: 3/5 http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

I don't know a lot about Thompson although I did read the Hell's Angels book a couple of times and I saw (the very awful) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have always felt that he was a man I prefer never to meet in person and wouldn't have wanted him for a neighbor. Although I am very much a child (??) of the sixties, I was more mouth than intellect. As a young lawyer, I was active of the civil rights and anti-war movements, but didn't have much interest in political campaigns. Hated Nixon and voted for whoever the Democratic candidate was.Thus I am surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. It brought back the sixties and seventies very vividly--the music and the documentary footage was very effective.Yes, it was fairly uncritical of Thompson. Tellingly, however, it closed with his ex-wife taking umbrage with the statement that his suicide was "heroic." As it is with most suicides, his was the act of a terribly angry man who was bound to show us how much we would miss him. Well, I'm still around & so is his wife & so many others. I actually felt sorry for him...I wonder if he ever had a truly happy day.This movie, then, for me, should have been subtitled "The Times of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," because that was where it was most successful.