The Rum Diary (2010)

Directed by: Bruce Robinson | 120 minutes | drama, adventure | Actors: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Aaron Eckhart, Giovanni Ribisi, Richard Jenkins, Amaury Nolasco, Marshall Bell, Bill Smitrovich, Michael Rispoli, Karen Austin, Jason Smith, Julian Holloway, Jimmy Ortega, Aaron Lustig, Karimah Westbrook, Gavin Houston, Bruno Irizarry

Johnny Depp pulled director Bruce Robinson out of his early retirement to adapt Hunter S. Thompson’s genius book ‘The Rum Diary’, which produces a very substandard and unbalanced end result. Robinson’s version of journalist Paul Kemp’s adventures in Puerto Rico is miles away from the interesting source material, and almost every choice has gone wrong.

For example, Depp’s choice for Robinson has turned out to be incorrect – the director never finds the tone that Thompson knew – and vice versa; Not a single moment is missed by the actor, labeled the ‘king of cool’ by People, to show his grimace, making Depp’s imperfections all the more visible. Perhaps the strange roles he’s played over the years weren’t forays into bizarre realities and offbeat characters; he simply cannot do otherwise. Depp is at least twenty-five years too old for his role and constantly doesn’t fit the bill, especially when played by Giovanni Ribisi in the scenes they share.

Bruce Robinson altered the original story so thoroughly that barely two lines of Thompson’s text remain. And except for the deleted co-leader, as the particularly unpleasant chaotic course of the story, the theme of the American dream is skilfully portrayed. From the uncertain beginnings under the tones of Dean Martin’s Volare, it can be seen that a disorganized comedy about booze has been aimed at (which is in no way comparable to the book) after which it only goes further downhill. “The Rum Diary” is the first film from Depp’s production company Infinitum Nihil, and the film gives the impression that it took too long to make it a hit, as Depp has only been looking for money since his successful role in “Pirates”. of the Caribbean’. It was logical that he was the outspoken person to get involved in the book adaptation; the actor himself found the book in a basement at Hunter S. Thompson’s home when the two hung out there in the 1990s. Without Depp, the book would never have been published, and the entire movie-loving world would not have been able to enjoy his bizarre role in that other one. Thompson classic, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” But ‘The Rum Diary’ is a very different story, set almost twenty years earlier, and has nothing to do with the ‘Gonzo journalism’ for which the writer became so famous in the 1970s.

Robinson has nothing to do with director Terry Gilliam, who in 1998 managed to find the right tone for an even stranger book of Thompson. The result is an empty shell, a flat comedy without a noteworthy scene or tone. No sharp edges, stripped of message, violence and eroticism, and a low point in Depp’s increasingly wandering oeuvre. Pretty much every cast or crew member has a decent list of good movies to his name, but it never gets good and doesn’t make a whole; like incoherent nonsense, ‘The Rum Diary’ collapses well before the end.