The Rum Diary

★★★

(2011)

This obviously loving, quite beautiful but slightly overlong and scattershot adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s early novel of corruption in Puerto Rico ends with Johnny Depp’ Paul Kemp sailing away on a stolen yacht into the wild blue yonder. That is, shortly after screaming about corruption, failure and the “Smell of bastards”, a typically contradictory Hunterism and it’s not the first time throughout the Bruce Robinson helmed The Rum Diary that the film feels a little confused.

Kemp, a self proclaimed failed novelist, arrives with a pounding hangover as new blood at a failing newspaper in Puetro Rico’s revolting streets and is immediately wrapped up in the political corruption of the industrious white American man. Editor in Cheif, Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) sets Kemp up to do slap happy tasks such as bowling alley holiday rewrites and craft the horoscopes but after Kemp meets slick business man Hal Sanderson (Aaron Ekhart) and his beautiful wife Chenault (Amber Heard) his adventure becomes the first of Thompsons many rages at capitalistic America.

Kemp, friendly photographer Sala (Micheal Rispoli) and alcoholic (or should that be “the most alcoholic”) Moberg (a wild Giovani Ribisi) begin to accidentally start a mini revolution of their own only to be met with ignorance by the other brow beaten newspaper men.

Robinson’s script teeters on comedy but never really goes for Withnail-like belly laughs, in fact it has an ever present glumness to it. Of course, one film which The Rum Diary will never fail to be compared to (Gilliam’s psycho bonkers brilliant Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) is also well and lurking quietly in the room. Though, of course, it could never have truly been helped. It’s there In Depp’s performance and voice over and more than ever in an wildly unnecessary hallucinogenic scene which drops Robinson right in the mess, only intensify later in the film.

In fact it’s almost the location which ends up being the star in a way and I’m sure that was never the first thing on Hunter’s mind, but the same can’t be said for Robinson and Depp (the films producer) who have gone for glitz in a film where grit would have possibly done it better. As a story of a time and a place, however it is an interesting one when thought about how it came to be. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical early rants are bubbling away under the surface but not quite yet rounded or fast enough to be considered “pure Gonzo”; But as the 22 year old penning the pages put it then; “I just haven’t learned to write like me yet.”