I'm not sure if one is supposed to take away any deeper life messages from director Bruce Robinson's adaptation of the early Hunter S. Thompson novel THE RUM DIARY, but if the sole purpose of the work was to entertain and show me something I've never seen done quite this way, then I'm on board. Part stream of consciousness, part newspaper man story, part tale of corruption in Puerto Rico in the final years of the Eisenhower administration, THE RUM DIARY centers on Paul Kemp (previous Thompson stand-in Johnny Depp) who moves to San Juan from New York to get a fresh start but finds out that things are tough all over.
He gets a job or the local, English-language paper, run by a shifty editor played by the great Richard Jenkins. Not surprising, Kemp is something of a drinker, and although he has sworn off the sauce, the sauce has not sworn off him. It doesn't take long for him to fall in with an unsavory crowd, including a filthy rich land dealer (Aaron Eckhart) and his hyper-sexualized fiancee (Amber Heard).
The land shark wants Kemp to write a few nice stories that will help improve a big deal he's on the verge of closing, but Kemp is being fed not-so-flattering information from a broken-down former newspaper writer, played by Giovanni Ribisi, who plays a wildly convincing drunk. Robinson, who gave us such inebriated delights as WITHNAIL & I, is actually the perfect filmmaker to corral this often-messy, loud and destructive gathering of (mostly) men. With access to a printing press and a subversive streak, Kemp is forced to decide to either play for the bad guys or expose them for the leaches that they are. Of course the third choice is to abandon Puerto Rico immediately, but where's the fun in that?
This the most fun I've had watching Depp in many years. Kemp is the perfect combination of intelligence and stupidity, and the resulting film comes across as a well-crafted dark comedy, peppered with some smart insight into the deep levels of deception in the government, law enforcement, and local media. Depp isn't playing this barely veiled version of Thompson in the same way he did in FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, and to do so would have been a mistake. Thompson's cynicism wasn't nearly as finely honed when he was a younger man, and his looks were good enough that he didn't have to work quite as hard to bed a few ladies.
Also, I'm becoming increasingly curious about Heard as an actor. Sure, she's sexy and gorgeous, but here she's given some space to show just what a fantastic train wreck her character is psychologically. The same goes for many of the creatures that inhabit THE RUM DIARY, which is more of a sit-back-and-take-it-in film than one that you actually have to engage your brain to enjoy. Allowing the story to simply unfold its many twisted layers is when the fun emerges. This film is not about how to live in paradise; it's about how to escape it's crushing embrace.
