IN THE WAKE OF THE WAILING that followed the death of Tim Russert, the consummate Washington insider and neocon enabler, it's instructive to read Hunter S. Thompson, who saw through the phoniness of the Washington press corps way back in '73. From the introduction to his scabrously brilliant Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72:

"The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists ...When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in."

Even in later years, with his best writing behind him, Thompson was amazingly prescient. Days after 9/11, while the mainstream media marched in lockstep to Bush's drumbeat, Thompson wrote, "We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides...We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once."

Thompson was an astute political thinker, but he became in some ways a slave to the myth he created. The substance of his keen observations tends to be ignored in favor of his tough, anarchic persona and his style, the freewheeling, hallucinogen-fueled participatory journalism that was christened "Gonzo" after the publication of "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved," and brilliantly deployed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the aforementioned Campaign Trail.

Late in his life — which ended in 2005 as he had vowed it would, with a Hemingwayesque shotgun to the head — Thompson admitted it was hard to know who he was supposed to be. Was he Hunter Thompson or Raoul Duke, the gun-waving persona to whom Garry Trudeau paid tribute in —? He was a man constantly at war with himself. His first wife and his widow describe him as a man of extremes - loving and generous and vicious and cruel.

People who try to write about him have a tendency to try to "out-gonzo" Thompson, lapsing into mimetic gonzo prose while trying to characterize Thompson, who consistently evades their grasp. Who was this man who captivated so many readers and aspiring journalists, who tried, but always failed, to channel his sui generis style?

A new documentary, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, by Alex Gibney, succumbs to the same temptation, using hallucinatory sequences, psychedelic music and dramatic readings from Thompson's books by Johnny Depp, who played him in the poorly received adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Gibney directed Taxi to the Darkside, the important Oscar-winning documentary about US torture policies. Thompson proves a far more elusive subject, one who has defeated many before him.

The film recognizes that Thompson's life is entwined with the history of the 1960s, so it tries to embrace everything: the Chicago riots, San Francisco hippie scene, Vietnam, Kent State and so on, alongside a biographical portrait of Thompson. We have seen this '60s footage ad infinitum, so the most illuminating portions of the movie are biographical.

Born in 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky, Thompson grew up lower middle-class, fatherless at 14, a troublesome, rebellious kid resentful of his wealthier classmates. He longed to be a great writer, and toward that end would type copies of books by Fitzgerald and Hemingway to get a feel for fine writing.

The film is remarkable for its detail, but also for how much it leaves out. There's no mention of Thompson's career in the Air Force, where he was sports editor of the base's newspaper, or of his early, stormy newspaper experience. But it does spend an inordinate amount of time on such things as his failed 1970 campaign for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado.

The '72 presidential campaign was arguably Thompson's finest hour, when the man and the moment magically converged. Writing for Rolling Stone, Thompson became an unlikely campaign correspondent, impressing the boys on the bus with his superhuman capacity for alcohol and drugs, and filing stories that were a mix of straight reporting and wild fantasy. He made no pretense of objectivity. In one story he notoriously suggested that Ed Muskie — a candidate he loathed — was addicted to an obscure West African drug called Ibogaine. He was enamored of George McGovern and despised Hubert Humphrey, whom he called "a shallow, contemptible old hack and a gutless old ward heeler." But his deepest contempt was reserved for Nixon, accurately described as a "cheap crook and merciless war criminal."

Strangely, though Gonzo covers a lot of ground, it doesn't reveal that much about the man behind the gonzo. One of its most interesting archival items is a clip of Thompson on the TV quiz show To Tell the Truth after his first book, Hell's Angels, for which he infiltrated the outlaw motorcycle gang. "Will the real Hunter Thompson please stand up?" the announcer intones, and the tall, lanky young man rises to his feet.

Though it tries earnestly, Gonzo never quite discovers who the real Thompson was. As with all good writers, he is best understood not by reveling in his personality, but by reading his work.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson: Opens Friday at the Cedar Lee Theater, 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-564-2034, clevelandcinemas.com.