Much like my own Gonzo review, The Washington Times’ Scott Galupo saw an excess of politics in Alex Gibney’s Hunter S. Thompson documentary:
“Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” was wrapped at the same time as filmmaker Alex Gibney’s last effort, “Taxi to the Dark Side,” an Oscar-winning documentary about the Bush administration’s controversial techniques for interrogating terrorist suspects.
Not coincidentally, “Gonzo” is overly pushy with Nixon-Bush and Vietnam-Iraq parallels, but if today’s antiwar left were more like Hunter S. Thompson, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a drearily sententious lot.
“Drearily sententious” — fine phrase. Elsewhere, the aphoristic Galupo attributes to Thompson “a theory and practice of journalism so idiosyncratic as to defy imitation.” And rather than risk an idiosyncratic (if not indeed dreary) descent into inimitable sententiousness, let’s just roll the clip: