Upon meeting a comely young woman out in the moonlit ocean while drifting aimlessly in a paddle boat, this film’s protagonist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) remarks to himself, ”Why did she have to happen? Just when I was doing so good without her.” The reason Kemp is able to be so clever is that he is the main character in a Hunter S. Thompson story, and if you know anything about Hunter S. Thompson, you know that his protagonists are usually just stand ins for himself, doing things that Thompson has really done, just with some of the details fudged. If there is any great asset that this film adaptation of “The Rum Diary” has at its disposal, it’s the unique worldview of it’s author, and his consistently delightful way with words.
But if there is any great downfall of this film, it’s that it was written by a young Thompson, about a young Thompson-esque character, both before they were at the height of their Gonzo, askew worldview powers. This story isn’t driven by the same force of poetry that something like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is. The Rum Diary is a more typical coming of age story, and Paul Kemp is a much more typical person than the spaced out Raoul Duke, who Depp played in Fear and Loathing. Kemp is a young reporter, trying to make a buck writing news copy schlock, who finds himself working for a struggling Puerto Rican rag called “The San Juan Star”. The story is based off a similar situation Thompson was in when he was young and in Puerto Rico, only he didn’t actually get the job at “The Star”, he found himself working somewhere even more obscure.
The main selling point of this film, other than the fact that it’s a work of Thompson, is that it’s a chance to see Depp once again playing a Thompson character. Fear and Loathing has some detractors, but it also has a legion of fans who loved Depp’s performance. They should be warned that The Rum Diary isn’t the same kind of experience. Yes Depp is doing his Thompson voice here, and yes this character has a similar, but more proto, worldview as Duke; but there are a number of differences. Depp plays things more straight. This time he’s playing a man with ideals, with ego. As Kemp he’s young and handsome, he falls for a girl in a way that’s more earnest and naive than debaucherous. He’s lucid more than he is unhinged. He’s got a daily routine, and other than the occasional drunken disaster he functions in society. I liked Depp here, he made me care about the Kemp character in a way I never did about Duke, and I did get a small nostalgic thrill to hear him once again monologuing with words that were clearly written by Thompson; but there’s nothing here as engrossing and revelatory as experiencing Thompson’s work from the prime of his career for the first time. The Rum Diary is far more pedestrian.
There is some supporting work that should be mentioned, as the performances are a lot of what drives this film. Aaron Eckhart plays a crooked land baron named Sanderson who gets Kemp mixed up in a scheme to develop hotels on a pristine island that should be preserved. It’s Kemp’s dealings with Sanderson, and the way he buys and sells anybody he wants with little regard to the destruction he causes, that starts him on his journey, that helps him develop his worldview. So it’s important that Sanderson be a jerk, but a kind of alluring and charming jerk. Eckhart does great with the role. I can’t imagine anyone else more perfect to play a rich white person. Amber Heard plays Ekhart’s girlfriend Chenault, who becomes an obsession for Kemp, and the main thing that drives him and Sanderson apart. Chenault came off like your typical, young and beautiful but vapid trophy girlfriend, and I never really bought that Kemp would choose her to develop an infatuation for. He seemed to me to be the type who would be drawn to someone more intellectual, more powerful, and the romance didn’t ring true. I think it was mostly in the way the character was written though, so I’m not ready to fault Heard for being unable to bring more intrigue to a character who was a 21-year-old girl wandering into a story about grown men.
Giovanni Ribisi and Michael Rispoli play Depp’s cohorts at the paper, Moburg and Sala, and they played to me as polar opposites. Ribisi has a history of going big with his characters, coloring them with goofy voices and physical affectations, and often it’s a distraction. I’m always keenly aware that he’s performing, and it takes me out of the reality of any scene he’s in. But here, in a more madcap Thompson envisioned world, he felt more at home than usual, and I found I didn’t mind him as much. His Moburg felt like one of Ralph Steadman’s drawings come to life. Rispoli, however, I completely loved. His Sala felt like he had been living in Puerto Rico for centuries. He was completely authentic, and the skin of his character felt lived in, the same way that great movie sets feel lived in instead of looking like they were assembled just for shooting. He’s an actor I haven’t noticed much before this, so I’m going to be keeping my eye on him from now on.
While I was taken enough with the characters and the location of this film to mostly enjoy it, ultimately it’s just too meandering a story to be a complete success. The Rum Diary is in no real hurry to get where it’s going, and it doesn’t really have a clear path marked out for how it’s going to get there. We get a lot of scenes of people hanging out, where nothing much is accomplished. The whole film is pretty devoid of stakes or momentum. The protagonists here are in danger of losing their jobs, but they don’t seem to care much. They’re in danger of being arrested, but it isn’t painted as much of a concern. Kemp and Sala seriously screw one of the most rich and powerful men on the island, but it doesn’t really have any consequences other than him thinking they’re A-holes. It’s only very late in the film where Kemp experiences an epiphany of moral outrage that it really starts going somewhere, but by then it was a little too late and I was getting fidgety.
There is an interesting story here, I just think it needed a little more polish, a little more focus. We get a bunch of high minded ideas that seem more agenda driven than Thompson’s later works. Here there’s a feeling he wants to take on the world and fix the broken parts, whereas his later Gonzo writings feel more like a eulogy for a dead and ridiculous culture. This movie explores greed and corruption and it asks what there is we can do about it. The book was written decades ago, but it’s more relevant today than ever. This could have been a really affecting tale about the ethics of business and journalism, but Kemp becomes motivated to stand up and do something too late in the film for it to really matter. The Rum Diary spends too much of its time chasing girls and looking at pretty scenery.
But even if it had gone more in the direction of telling a story of social upheaval and showcasing a man standing against the system, I’m not sure that would have made audiences happy either. The marketer in me thinks that this thing should have been retitled Fear and Loathing: Origins. That’s basically what it is, the story of how Hunter S. Thompson found his unique voice, and audiences love prequels and titles with colons. But still, once those people wanting to see a movie celebrating mind altering and salacious behavior got into the theater and instead got a movie more about journalism than rum, they would have been disappointed as well. The Rum Diary is sitting right between two different kinds of stories, and they’re both good stories, but it doesn’t commit enough to either to do them well. It now makes sense to me why the novel was written in the early 60s but not published until 98. I think Thompson knew he had something here, but he just never found the right angle to attack it from. What we get is certainly worth a watch, but not quite worth a recommendation.
