The Rum Diary
2011
**½
Director: Bruce Robinson
Cast: Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Rispoli, Amber Heard, Richard Jenkins, Giovanni Ribisi
This drama comedy was adapted from Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical novel, which was written in 1961 but published only in 1998. Johnny Depp played Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and now he plays the writer's alter ego, Paul Kemp. In 1960, this semi-alcoholic writer takes a job at a newspaper in Puerto Rico, which is boiling under the surface. He kills his time drinking and writing the odd trivial article, until an American businessman asks him to help with an elaborate real estate scam. The performances are solid, the setting is captivating and the period is wonderfully recreated, which is another way to say that the whole is not very good. The film is never exactly boring, but it is long and pointless.
