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�The Edge. There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.� Academy Award-Winning director Alex Gibney documentary is at times a fascinating portrait of the man who wrote and lived by these words, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Thompson�s gonzo journalism was a heady mix of well-researched �straight� reportage mixed up with wild imaginings and flat out lies, with the aim of getting to the elusive truth. The documentary focuses the good doctor�s heyday of 1965-1975, and so is blessed with a kaleidoscope of imagery and events from the vast upheavals of the time. It is also doubly blessed by the sheer wealth of escapades he got up to during this period and healthy slices of gleefully savagery at the heart of Thompson�s best prose.

Gibney�s film is mostly assembled in chronological order from interviews with the main players in Thompson�s life and career (including his wives, his editor, his son, his contemporaries, Jimmy Carter), plus news footage, films, and clips from other documentaries. Johnny Depp (who appeared as the writer�s alter ego in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) holds it all together, narrating direct from Thompson�s work.

We�re treated to insights into Thompson�s year embedded with the Hells Angels; his running for Sheriff of Aspen on a Freak power ticket (and nearly winning); his long running and defining relationship with �Rolling Stone� magazine; and his iconic and madcap work with Ralph Steadman.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is his most famous work, but seems oddly passed over in Gibney�s film. Instead of any real deep insight into its coming about or indeed its incendiary effect at the time, the director chooses to show clips from the admittedly very good Terry Gilliam production instead.

If Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was Thompson�s search for the American Dream, then Fear and Loathing on Campaign Trail was his search for an honest politician. And for awhile he found it in one of the most insightful of the interviewees, the 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern. The hilarious high point of the film is the Ibogaine episode when Thompson all but destroyed Republican hopeful Ed Muskie by starting a bare-faced lie of a rumour that he was being administered the psychoactive drug by a �mysterious Brazilian doctor�. However, as Gibney wisely shows, Thompson�s anger prose was at his best when attacking wrongs and injustices, and his most impressive and cutting bile was always reserved from his arch-nemesis Richard Nixon.

Perhaps too much is made of the many parallels between the then Nixon-era and the current Bush-era. It is an interesting and in no way a spurious point, but it is clear from the bias this section of the film enjoys that this is perhaps really where Gibney�s heart and natural inclination as a filmmaker lead. Because of the delay in the UK release Gonzo perhaps also suffers from the same unfortunate timing as Oliver Stone�s W; the Bush-baiting times are all but over, and already seem a little out of date as people look forward to the Obama presidency. Parallels between Bush and Nixon eras would have perhaps had more power a few years ago. In this film the focus should have been more on Thompson himself.

Past his best, his cover blown and unable to write Thompson retreated to his fortified compound in Colorado and surrounded himself with hangers on. By his own admission he had become trapped by his own legend; that of the renegade journalist with a taste for Olympian consumption of drugs, drink and guns. The film makes no bones about the fact that Thompson�s suicide was no surprise to his friends, who he had told for years that he would kill himself. That said the documentary ends on a relative high and twinkle in its eye as his ashes are shot from a giant canon mounted with a towering two-thumbed gonzo fist.

Gonzo has the most thorough access of any documentary on Thompson, and is often a genuinely entertaining piece of work. But unlike the director�s previous films (Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), and indeed the best of Thompson�s own work, it does not quite ask enough of the difficult questions of its subject to really get under the skin of the good doctor.