By Todd Garbarini
Filmed in 2009 in San Juan and Vega
Baja, Puerto Rico, The Rum Diary
(2011) feels much the way that Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) felt in that it seems like two movies in
one. In Mr. Kubrick’s Vietnam War film, the
opening boot camp scenes took the audience through the Marine Corps Recruit
Depot on Parris Island, SC to see the demoralization process in action that
makes killing machines out of the marines. The combat scenes, which were shot
before the aforementioned training sequence, takes the audience out of the boot
camp and puts them into the heart of the action. In the The
Rum Diary, the first half of the film follows an alcoholic, Kemp (Johnny Depp), through his exploits in
Puerto Rico after he lands a job as a journalist for a dying newspaper in the
years prior to the Kennedy assassination; the second half almost feels like the
hangover and the after effects of too much self-indulgence. This is not a swing at the film, which is an
accomplished cinematic work and not the desultory meanderings of an idealistic
writer that the film’s detractors have intimated. Rather, it is a regard for
the differences in tone and style the film takes as the protagonist makes his
way through the underbelly of society which is bifurcated into the incredibly
wealthy and the outright dirt poor, with crooked politicians and corrupt police
officers galore.
Based upon the
novel by Mr. Depp’s longtime friend Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote the novel in
the 1961 and had it published in 1998 after Mr. Depp’s urging, The Rum Diary
depicts Kemp, writing
BS-stories and horoscope for a newspaper that is on the verge of failing. Lotterman
(Richard Jenkins), the paper’s Editor-in-Chief, knows the end is near and hires
Kemp, knowing full well of his romance with the bottle and; Sala (Michael
Rispoli), a staff photographer who runs cock fights on the side, philosophizes
about life in Puerto Rico and lands in deep dung with Kemp and what passes off
as The Law. The perpetually inebriated Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi in arguably the
film’s best performance), who mouths off to Lotterman, is another of the
paper’s staff members – he gives Kemp and Sala a drug that causes trips they
won’t soon forget. Hal Sanderson (Aaron
Eckhart, in a two-faced role not nearly as nefarious as his turn in Neil
LaBute’s In the Company of Men (1997)
but still crooked nonetheless) is a wealthy local aristocrat who takes Kemp
under his wing and asks him to write about a proposed hotel that he is involved
with. Kemp’s assignment is to paint Sanderson and his business partners in a
positive light even though the beautiful landscape would be severely
compromised by the deal. Sanderson's fiancé Chenault (Amber Heard) catches Kemp’s
eye, and before long she is out of Sanderson’s arms and into Kemp’s bed. Ms. Heard plays Chenault with the same aplomb
she has brought to her previous onscreen characterizations, most notably as the
AIDS-infected Christie in Gregor Jordan’s underappreciated The Informers (2009).
The critical
reaction to The Rum Diary reminds me of another of Mr. Depp’s films, Blow
(2000), which was unfairly overlooked upon its initial release, as it drew
comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s admittedly superior Goodfellas (1990),
with the former somehow being the bastard stepchild of the latter. Blow was as entertaining as is The
Rum Diary, and who better than Mr. Depp to bring it to the screen after his
collaboration with Mr. Thompson on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in
1998?
The Blu-ray looks terrific, with
minimal film grain and manages to capture the dark and light aspects of Puerto
Rico quite nicely. Extras-wise, the disc
contains: A Voice Made of Ink and Rage:
Inside The Rum Diary in high definition, which runs about twelve minutes. Mr. Depp talks about his friendship with Mr. Thompson,
while other members of the cast and crew discuss the story in general and
working on the film. The Rum Diary Back-Story is in standard
definition and runs about 45 minutes, discussing how the film got made.
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