Short Review: Pathetic, violent, hypocritical and self-absorbed, sounds like a suitable leftist hero to me.


If the elite class' journalist jester, Hunter S. Thompson, wasn't a fully tilt sociopath then he did one heck of an impression. He was a drug addled, dangerous man-child who despised the "squares" while trying to replace their rules with chaos. The man lived a life of flagrant and stunning hypocrisy. This film unintentionally displays all that is wrong with the sixties hippie generation, using Thompson as their focus.

The film itself is well done. Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) knows how to put together an interesting documentary. Thompson is a curious figure and Gibney manages to make the devilish freak a fascinating subject and succeeds in presenting a fawning look at the "gonzo journalist". Gibney gets the right interviews with the right people and even has Johnny Depp narrating the proceedings. As far as piece of fluffy, celeb-worship goes, it does not get much better.

The reason I recommend the film is because it clearly shows everything that is corrupt, stupid and sickening about the sixties generation. This is about the time I start getting e-mails from nineteen-year-old undergrad students who tell me "I don't get it" and losers in their thirties who will harp against conservatives and hold Thompson and his ilk up as social heroes. Blah, blah blah. Hunter S. Thompson was the sixties generation. His writings, as eloquent as they were, all pointed back to him. Everything was filtered through how his man-child ego perceived things. His articles? About him. His run for sheriff? About him. His books? About him. His death? About him. Me, me, me, more me now. All of this consuming attention paid on himself while at the same time pointing at American culture and crying that it was shallow and evil.

The culture that belched out of the sixties reveled in group individualism - do whatever you want man, just as long as you act like us. Thompson's run for Sheriff of Aspen encapsulated this contradictory and ultimately pathetic mindset. At once he rallied the leftist losers to his side with claims that the political system was corrupt, and oppressive. He did this while promising to make police policy to overthrow drug laws. In other words, he promised to act outside of the boundaries of his office (sheriffs protect the laws, not make them) and act as a fascist. When he lost his bid for the office, Thompson then gloomily stated that "American politics are f***ed." Not moments before when he thought he was winning, the position of America was just fine. His contradictory thinking and statements are littered throughout his life, all held by the cultural elite as being brilliant and praiseworthy. Thompson loved the Kennedys, despite their elitist foundations and corrupt machinery that produced them. He would later rally against the Vietnam War which JFK started and who's underlings mismanaged while still holding the Kennedys up as a model for us all. This kind of dual reality is at the heart of the sixties generation we have been asked to worship for forty years.

Thompson was the Lenny Bruce of journalism, but like Bruce he was a destructive menace who ultimately did more harm than good. Thompson gets a documentary with a brand name corporate actor narrating his obituary is because of the left's continual worship at the alter of the hippie revolution. There is a telling moment in the film when Thompson's smiling landlord praises the man in the worst possible way, "He never paid his rent, broke up my marriage and taught both of my kids how to smoke dope." The man's life, like so many others, was devastated by Thompson's influence and he sees it as a charm. I watched it and realized the sickness in the man's words. This pathetic celeb worshiper is no different than the ignorant younger generations gobbling up the cultural slop served to them by their hippie generation cultural masters. They have been told their whole lives that the sixties were brilliant and good and few ever pause to reflect on the truth. Thompson and his ilk were hypocrytes of the highest order and deserve pity not praise. My hope is that I live long enough to see the youth of America turn on those who squandered their birth rights for cheap thrills in decades past.

Watch the film as a reminder of just how vacuous the American left was back then and continues to be today. Their movement is not about helping anyone except themselves and they're helping themselves to what is rightfully yours.



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The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2007)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Critical Mass Film House
Film-Forward

Labels: documentary, film, movie review