|
The Rum Diary
| Released |
11 November 2011 |
| Director |
Bruce Robinson |
Starring
|
Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Rispoli, Amber Heard, Richard Jenkins, Giovanni Ribisi |
| Writer(s) |
Bruce Robinson |
Producer(s)
|
Christi Dembrowski, Johnny Depp, Tim Headington, Graham King, Robert Kravis, Anthony Rhulen |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
110 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama, mystery, thriller |
| Rating |
15A |
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Withnail and Aye Carumba.
At the start of The Rum Diary Aaron Eckhart's Sanderson hires Kemp (played by Johnny Depp) as a double agent in a sleazy although not quite diabolical scheme to despoil an untouched island in Puerto Rico with a series of high rise tourist traps. Sanderson needs to utilise Kemp's journalistic talents, swaying opinion with Machiavellian prose, in his own words he needs Kemp to, “assimilate contradictory points of view into one voice”, he needs Kemp to sell his idea of Puerto Rico's future.
This is Bruce Robinson's first film since 1992's thriller Jennifer 8 and this time around, what's required of Bruce Robinson is much like what's required of Kemp. Bruce needs to tell a story faithful to Hunter S. Thompson's original novella and braid together a tale of what Puerto Rico means. A country that's brimming with contradictions, disparities, a city of great wealth and great poverty, a city that smug middle class American tourists visit but never explore outside their resorts, taking holiday snaps as they linger by the pool, or in hotel rooms and bowling alleys and a city whose proletariat feels disenfranchised.
And in certain respects Robinson does all this or at least poses the question that there is different Puerto Ricos, subtly making his point with a series of visual cues but never attempting to write a dissertation. Fans of gonzo journalism's progenitor won't be disappointed either and there's a plethora of zingy, wised up dialogue that assures you that Hunter S. Thompson rode the wave's crest of zeitgeist before people said things like zeitgeist. Loosely based around Thompson's time working as a sports writer in Puerto Rico in the 1950s, the tale is fictional but has a rum, sweat and marimba beat veracity to its every moment. Coupled with pre-Kennedy news footage of Richard Nixon, The Rum Diary pinpoints the exact moment people woke up from the American Dream and counter culture was birthed.
In ways The Rum Diary is a perfect project for the Withnail and I director, Giovanni Ribisi is wonderfully deranged as Moburg and Michael Spirali as Sala provides another turbulent foil for a tale that doesn't need a straight man to aid it in its anarchically on point comic timing. It's a buddy movie meets Our Man in Havana with the drugs on show.
- Cormac O’Brien |
