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July 10- 17, 2008
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Fear and loathing on the big screen
by Tasha Robinson
Superhero needs lithium
by Michael Philips
 Fear and loathing on the big screen
by Tasha Robinson
In a telling clip toward the end of Alex Gibney’s biopic Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, a young Thompson explains that his myth has outgrown him, and that he, as a real, living human being, is standing in its way. “It’d be much better if I died,” he says, with no particular rancor. “Then people could take the myth and make films.”
And so Gibney has. Gonzo is more about the myth than the man; in spite of interviews with his wife, his ex-wife, his son Juan and his longtime artistic partner Ralph Steadman, plus intimate home videos and audio recordings, the film has more breadth than depth. In laying out a history of Thompson’s work and his legacy, it leans heavily on his “gonzo” image, the hard-boozing, hard-drugging, larger-than-life persona that dominated his writing, and sometimes outshone it.
As with previous documentaries such as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Taxi to the Dark Side, writer-director Gibney offers up a sleekly entertaining, dynamic collage of sources. Thompson friend Johnny Depp narrates and reads excerpts from the author’s writing. Interviewees such as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Carter, Pat Buchanan, George McGovern and Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner discuss Thompson’s history and his impact on the social and political scene of the ’60s and ’70s. Where Gibney can’t find illustrative stock footage, home videos or TV clips, he re-creates scenes from Thompson’s life with actors, or uses clips of Depp as Thompson in the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Bill Murray as Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam.
The bright tapestry he weaves lays out a timeline of Thompson’s writing and provides plenty of samples of it, but it doesn’t do much to get below Thompson’s prickly surface — which is a particular problem, since the film frequently acknowledges how much of that surface was pretense, an attempt to live up to a reputation that Thompson sometimes considered a trap.
Early on, biographer Douglas Brinkley offers what he considers the formative experience of Thompson’s life: growing up poor in Louisville, Thompson befriended the town’s privileged kids and ran around raising hell with them. But when they were all arrested after a night of drinking, “the rich kids who knew the judges got out. Hunter never got to walk for graduation; he was in jail.” Brinkley considers that the point at which Thompson’s outsider status and his fury at the establishment was permanently sealed.
Gonzo could use more such insight. It’s accessible, entertaining and hugely kinetic, packed with memorable songs from Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and many more icons of Thompson’s era. Like all of Gibney’s work, it’s informative and a little titillating, just sensationalistic enough to grab a broader audience than the subject alone might warrant. And it’s a fine portrait for neophytes looking for a first overview of Thompson’s life, work and eventual well-telegraphed suicide. But like Thompson’s work itself, it sometimes feels like a smoke screen, a colorful but distracting set of pretenses hiding as much as they reveal.
—MCT
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 Superhero needs lithium
by Michael Philips
The idea sounds ripe: Will Smith, one of the screen’s most engaging movie stars, playing a surly wino of a superhero, making a mess of Los Angeles as he comes to the occasional aid of those in need. But not even Smith’s charisma can mitigate the chaos that is Hancock.
It depresses me to think of all the preteens who’ll be sitting through this, since it squeaked by with a PG-13 rating; the violence and the general abrasiveness are a genuine drag. Then again, adults won’t be much better off. In this highly superheroic summer of Iron
Man and the forthcoming The Dark Knight, Hancock can offer only an A-list headliner in a D-list project.
The notion is that a vaguely self-loathing superhero, who spends his days flying around Los Angeles and taking care of its assault-weapon-toting vermin, suffers from self-esteem issues that prevent him from being the best he can be.
Enter a public relations whiz (Jason Bateman), whom Hancock saves from a collision with a train. The PR man, despite the protestations of his wife (Charlize Theron), takes on Hancock as his latest project. The flack makes Hancock, who doesn’t know how he gained his special powers, see the value in soft, non-destructive landings and the odd kind word.
Halfway through, screenwriters Vy Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan dump a huge load of superhero backstory onto the movie’s doorstep. Director Peter Berg and his cinematographer shoot a lot of Hancock in gritty, nausea-inducing close-up, and the effects — aurally bombastic, visually ordinary — sit on the action in all the wrong ways. Why shoot this film like an R-rated action thriller? What good does all the nastiness do except to rough up an audience like a corrupt cop interrogating a suspect?
Pro that he is, Smith doesn’t dog a minute of it. He’s such an easygoing presence, he periodically humanizes the material. His name alone may well ensure a profitable week or two for Hancock. But like Last Action Hero and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, this is a film searching, desperately, for the right stylization and the right tone. The sight gag destined to be the film’s talking point involves a man with his head rammed up another man’s hindquarters. And if you don’t like hearing about it, don’t let your kids see it.
–MCT
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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