The film picks up right around the time Hunter started his tenure traveling the Hell’s Angels and he quickly makes a name for himself as his exposé flipped their somewhat “glamorous” life in the media to scrutiny and being called rapist and murders. And the film quickly shows us how Thompson is able to shake things up and he didn’t do it just because, he did it because he felt like the people deserved the truth. In fact, Thompson’s ability to tell things how they were is what would set him apart from the pack throughout his career.
The film next delves into his life as a proposed politician of sorts in his attempt to become Sheriff of the county which contains Aspen in Colorado. While seeming at first like a joke, you quickly realize Thompson is all business. In fact, he makes some fantastic points and while he is quite liberal and his agendas would disrupt the social order quite a bit, he calls for people to just be fair, just, and free. The man believes highly in freedom and the documentary does an excellent job of showing us that. Whether it is readings from his later works about Bush II or his nearly successful efforts to get George McGovern into the White House through his work on the campaign trail for Rolling Stone in 1976, Thompson had a desire to try and change this country however he could in the direction that he felt it should go.
The interviews in the film are done well but the pacing and length of time spent on some subjects are stretched a bit thin, and can be a shade redundant, but most bits are told with a good heart and there is surprisingly little hate shared about that man. In fact, a bit more of a contrast to an almost entirely positive praise lauded on Thompson in the film might have helped it a bit and provided a broader image of the man for us to understand; especially with a man that had as many critics as he amassed overtime.
8/10
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