Movie Review: The Rum Diary
At one point in Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of Hunter S. Thomspon’s experiential novel The Rum Diary, a turtle with jewels glued to its shell catches the sight of American journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) – the animal is a metaphor for the wanton avarice of the tax-evading businessmen luring Paul into a scheme, but it also serves as an apt description for this pretty but slothful take on Thompson’s early adventures in 1960 Puerto Rico.
Depp steps into familiar shoes as Kemp, having played another exaggerated Hunter Thompson surrogate in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That movie played up all of the grotesque drug mania found in Thompson’s seminal work, but only took brief respites to reflect on the socio-political commentary that made the book more than just one long bad trip. The Rum Diary gives us some insight into Thompson’s formative years as the fictionalized (though not by much) Paul Kemp as he takes on fluff assignments for a floundering Puerto Rican/American newspaper. Too old by half to be the 22-year-old wastrel soused on mini bottles of booze, Depp is nevertheless the logical choice for the role. The actor even got the director of his favorite movie (the unimpeachable classic British comedy Withnail & I) Bruce Robinson to imbue the film with the shaggy charms of his earlier work. With this pedigree how could they fail?
The Rum Diary was written in 1960, but not published until 1998 – long after Thompson had gained cult status by issuing some of the most vitriolic political commentary of the 1960s and 1970s. One can see by the formlessness of the story at hand and why it remained unpublished for so long. What we have is a debauched travelogue that has sporadic flashes of comedic abandon (mostly involving troublemaking with another reporter played by The Sopranos’ Michael Rispoli) and underpinnings of the venting of spleen to come, but the Kemp character even laments that “I don’t know how to write like me.” The Rum Diary plays it too safe and feels like a young man’s wish fulfillment tale – like a romance with the sexy young wife (Amber Heard) of Kemp’s reptilian business partner (Aaron Eckhart) – with an anti-climax lacking purpose except to assure us that Kemp will become that “voice of ink and rage” we so admire.
Perhaps it is unfair to view this only through the amber shooting glasses of the iconic literary figure since this is purportedly a fiction meant to be taken on its own merits. In terms of just looking at this narrative, it feels like a series of half-jokes and morning-after revelations that are leading up to a cohesive intention without ever quite taking us on board. There is much to enjoy in The Rum Diary – the standout being Giovanni Ribisi’s scene-stealing turn as a human shell filled with alcohol with a “Tom Waits” rasp that they call “Moburg.” Ribisi lends an air of libertine decay (like Benicio Del Toro did in Gilliam’s movie) as a paranoid reporter obsessed with Nazism (Hitler speech recordings, an effete way of holding his cigarette) and on the search for the drug that will finally send him to the other side. When the film follows Moburg’s dark path it finds its strengths and begins to cohere with Thompson’s pet themes.
Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary. © 2011 – FilmDistrict.
There is a plot of sorts concerning the dissolution of the newspaper and the pillaging of the island by American developers but as I said, the whole scenario feels under construction. Robinson may be an idol of Depp’s but he is out of his depth when trying to make sense of a scenario that involves cockfight betting, a hermaphroditic oracle, starving children in slums, Nixon and the future he would influence, and a standout scene highlighting the tension between the locals and their unwanted American visitors at an off-road cantina.
Eventually Moburg introduces Kemp and Sala (Rispoli) to an intense hallucinogen and we rightfully look forward to the freed id so thoroughly indulged in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, yet aside from a little freaky CGI and a great snatch of Thompson’s paranoid poetry – Kemp calls Sala’s slithering tongue an “accusatory giblet” – the scene pales in comparison to the earlier film’s definitive freakouts. So if the long-term fans of this movie are meant to be Thompson’s acolytes, then they are sure to be let down by the relatively tame, nascent qualities of The Rum Diary (unless they are of the opinion that the ramshackle Bill Murray vehicle Where the Buffalo Roam is better than Gilliam’s take on Thompson). The Rum Diary is an interesting glimpse of men of ill-fortune with febrile minds that has a few interesting points to make about American hypocrisy, but is awash in an anecdotal and inconsequential narrative.
Gregory Fichter
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