While the film itself is an unbalanced and tepid depiction of this "revolutionary" anti-war personality, filled with mediocre performances and at times incoherent composition, I found its content to be the most off-putting aspect of this work. As a self-professed (though anarchist-leaning) nihilist, I know unfortunately little about this figure highly relevant to the politics to which I most closely adhere, and the subject of this film hardly merits the accolades attributed to the late, now fabled Mr. Hoffman (unless, of course, this movie provides an accurate presentation of someone by which the Leftist community has been ultimately duped).
All the while professing a love of humanity and hatred of the power-mongers that would hold nations (such as Vietnam) in thrall for their own egoistic ends, this man subjected his wife, child, girlfriend (with whom he knew great happiness while the family he abandoned barely scraped by), comrades and politically-sympathetic donors to great hardship, financial and otherwise, to keep him out of prison and away from the misery that the many for which he supposedly fought knew only too well. He and his band of Yippies propelled themselves to the forefront of history and celebrity with seemingly enjoyable, iconoclastic guerilla theatre, and other pranks that served to increase the popularity and egos of the socially conscious participants, but to what end? The Vietnam war raged on amidst their gamboling, and the poor and oppressed continued (and continue) to languish under the same system of capitalism that existed before such bright ideas were engendered in the minds of these fighters. At least, his name will go down in history, as a man that achieved great renown, under the guise of fighting a system in which he ultimately made no dents, while his two mistresses suffered and a group of privileged, Jewish intellectuals thought they were making difference by getting high and getting mad...
All the while professing a love of humanity and hatred of the power-mongers that would hold nations (such as Vietnam) in thrall for their own egoistic ends, this man subjected his wife, child, girlfriend (with whom he knew great happiness while the family he abandoned barely scraped by), comrades and politically-sympathetic donors to great hardship, financial and otherwise, to keep him out of prison and away from the misery that the many for which he supposedly fought knew only too well. He and his band of Yippies propelled themselves to the forefront of history and celebrity with seemingly enjoyable, iconoclastic guerilla theatre, and other pranks that served to increase the popularity and egos of the socially conscious participants, but to what end? The Vietnam war raged on amidst their gamboling, and the poor and oppressed continued (and continue) to languish under the same system of capitalism that existed before such bright ideas were engendered in the minds of these fighters. At least, his name will go down in history, as a man that achieved great renown, under the guise of fighting a system in which he ultimately made no dents, while his two mistresses suffered and a group of privileged, Jewish intellectuals thought they were making difference by getting high and getting mad...