Gonzo (2008) is not a particularly good documentary, but it is a fine homage to Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist par excellence. Yes, homage—“special honour or respect expressed publicly.” So if you’re looking for an reasoned, balanced assessment of Hunter’s career, you won’t find it here. I’m not sure why the excellent documentary film maker Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) chose to pay homage, but I can guess. Based on Gibney’s other films and comments he has made about his other work, I’d guess that Alex wished that the wild journalist Hunter was still around to take the mickey out of the Bush administration. (Hunter shot himself in 2005.) Gonzo would have been much better if it had been made after Obama’s election. As it is, the film is tough to watch. Although Hunter is presented in a positive light, he is not a likeable person—angry, kind, wildly excessive, always critical, not much of a father or husband, a serious drug addict--and we really don’t see much evidence of his being kind. The documentary glosses many of the negatives. As Roger Ebert asked of a man who drank a bottle of hard liquor a day and topped it up with miscellaneous drugs—No hangover? If you haven’t read Hunter’s gonzo journalism, you’ll get snippets read by Johnny Depp, but gonzo journalism was not about snippets, it was about rambling, self-absorbed, crazy riffing on serious topics. Although we see why Hunter invented such extreme reporting—he was an angry idealist—we don’t see why he remained trapped in a gonzo lifestyle until, as he predicted, he killed himself. The film is too respectful—something Hunter never was!