The Rum Diary (15) **

The Rum Diary (15) **

Dir: Bruce Robinson

Starring: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Aaron Eckhart

Synopsis: Set in San Juan in 1960, The Rum Diary follows American journalist Paul Kemp (Depp) as he discovers new excesses in alcohol, love and being handed the bad end of the stick by people in high up places.

Verdict: Don’t you just hate it when a film seems entirely cobbled together? Too many stories making up the whole to the point of confusion? Admittedly, it works when you have intertwining stories featuring different characters, but when the higgledy-piggledy series of events that befall Depps protagonist in The Rum Diary all come together, it becomes hard to follow.

The premise of the film seems to be The Hangover meets All The Presidents Men – Eckhart’s Sanderson is an expat who wants to use Kemps’ writing talent to gain approval to build hotels, and the editor at the newspaper is doing a bad job of keeping the publication afloat which means endless strife for the journalist and his sidekick Sala (Michael Rispoli). This, coupled with an excessive amount of alcohol consumption (and one kick from a strong hallucinogenic) makes his attempts to get the better of both these people fruitless.

The first half hour or so of the film is quite slow, as it basically follows Kemp as he drinks, smokes, and secures his job, before the film finally goes somewhere with the introduction of the love interest, Chenault (Heard) who is going out with Sanderson. The point of the film wasn’t made apparent until the seedy-ness of Sanderson is introduced.

At least the drunken antics of Sala and Kemp is good for some laughs. Compared to The Hangover where you feel as though you’ve seen all the best comedy moments in the trailer, The Rum Diary keeps some of its funniest material close to its chest for when you see it. It is also noteworthy to

It is disappointing how Depp is becoming a typecast actor, in that all the characters he plays are either drunk, or mad as hatters, and there is a fine line between the two. Having said this, he does do it very well. Eckhart again proves himself as a great actor in this, though it can be said that the character is a bit Harvey Two-Face.

Having not read Hunter S. Thompson’s book, I can only imagine that it is not as confusing or hard to follow as the film turned out to be – fitting a man’s whole experience into two hours, no matter how much of a drunken blur it might be,  has not turned out well.