The Rum Diary: adapted by Bruce Robinson from the novel by Hunter S. Thompson; directed by Bruce Robinson; starring Johnny Depp (Kemp), Michael Rispoli (Sala), Aaron Eckhart (Sanderson), Amber Heard (Chenault), Richard Jenkins (Lotterman), and Giovanni Ribisi (Moberg) (2011): Johnny Depp found Hunter S. Thompson's unpublished novel in Thompson's basement in 1997 when Depp was living with Thompson in order to research Depp's role in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The novel had been written in the late 1950's and never published; soon after Depp's discovery it was published, and Depp spent the next 13 years trying to get a film version made.
With Depp playing the thinly veiled Thompson role of reporter Kemp and Withnail and I writer/director Bruce Robinson handling those same duties here, The Rum Diary ends up being a pretty good film. It also works in a narrative sense, something that other Thompson adaptations and homages have failed to accomplish. It may have helped that the source is a straightforward novel and not something from Thompson's mature phase of gonzo journalism.
The Rum Diary is shaggy and a bit unfocused, but it also achieves moments of anarchic humour and social commentary as it looks at the stranglehold of American businessmen on Puerto Rico's affairs in the late 1950's. Kemp, drunk and occasionally disorderly, is initially apolitical when he's hired by a Puerto Rican daily as its horoscope writer (!). But things change.
Depp is fine and controlled (maybe a bit too controlled) as Kemp. Michael Rispoli's Sala, a newspaper photographer, is Kemp's rumpled, sweaty, well-meaning guide to life on the island. Giovanni Ribisi plays a perpetually drunk, perpetually crusading reporter who fills Kemp in on what's really going on in between belching fire and hallucinating. Aaron Eckhart is the Ugly American Sanderson, looking for real-estate deals and fencing off beaches from the natives who needs those beaches to fish and catch lobsters. Sanderson's wife, played by Amber Heard as a dissatisfied trophy wife, soon becomes a love interest for Kemp.
The newspaper, corrupt at the top, won't report on anything worth reporting; Sanderson wants Kemp as a glorified brochure writer to help seal a real-estate deal. Voodoo, drugs, and fist fights will soon result. Expensive hotels will rise where once people lived. Americans will flock to Puerto Rico to gamble and...go bowling? And Kemp will finally figure out what he's supposed to write about, and why, and most importantly how. Do you smell that? It's the smell of bastards. Also the truth. It's the smell of ink. Recommended.
Withnail and I: written and directed by Bruce Robinson; starring Paul McGann ('I'), Richard E. Grant (Withnail), and Richard Griffiths (Monty) (1987): A cult movie that seems now to be embraced by the mainstream, Withnail and I is quirky, funny, and occasionally self-indulgent. Cult movies often are self-indulgent -- that's partially how they become cult movies.
A certain type of person in his or her early 20's is going to discover this film and see so much of himself or herself in it that it will become a signpost for that certain time of life when some people don't entirely know what's coming next, but do know that what's going on now has to end, and soon.
Withnail is a very, very unsuccessful actor in London in his late 20's; 'I' is a slightly less unsuccessful actor and Withnail's roommate. It's autumn of 1969. They're drunk a lot and stoned a lot. Their apartment is overrun with dirty dishes, rats, and the occasional loveable drug dealer. Withnail cons his uncle Monty (a flaming Richard Griffiths) into giving them the keys to his country cottage. They go off for a restorative weekend in the country.
'I' narrates the film -- writer-director Bruce Robinson based the events on things that happened to him over a five-year span -- with a paranoid, puzzled elan. Withnail, perpetually drunk and perpetually, outlandishly over-sized in speech and gesture, is both frustrating and magnetic. Griffiths's Monty, initially a caricature, grows into a sympathetic character without losing his own out-sized charm. A lot of the humour of the country sequences springs from the utter incompatibility of the two leads with country living -- they might as well be trying to vacation on the moon without spacesuits.
Grant's Withnail is the flamboyant, self-destructive, untrustworthy showpiece of the film, while McGann holds down the fort with his befuddled, panic-attack-prone protagonist. To some extent, it's like a Sherlock Holmes movie with no crime.
There's a certain sadness to the end of the film that I imagine a lot of people identify with the end of their college days, and an end to spending huge amounts of time with friends one will soon lose touch with, forever. I can imagine a lot of people hating this film, but those who will like it, will probably end up loving it. Highly recommended.
