“The Rum Diary” is especially appealing for anyone who has ever dabbled as a reporter or visited a Caribbean Island. It is a movie about extremes – the highs and lows of working for a newspaper, the excitement of bonding with other writers and photographers, the lure of rum, the windswept ocean, and the poverty that is found beneath the surface of the luxury hotels that line the shore. When I was a young college graduate I worked as a reporter and met interesting people that helped define the era, later I would briefly work for Open Air, a New York City tabloid. My tenure was short there, but the people I worked with defined the era and the times at the turn of the 21st Century in New York.
In a sense rum is the star of the film “The Rum Diary.” Johnny Depp is outstanding as a man consumed by passion and printing what was right. Depp takes an engaging, charming turn as Hunter S. Thompson for “The Rum Diary.” It’s an adaptation of Thompson’s long-lost and only novel, written in the 1960s but not published until 1998. Though the book is a novel, it’s based on Thompson’s experience living in Puerto Rico and is not a far cry from his non-fiction work, adds Associated Press (AP). The novel is “memoir masquerading as fiction,” wrote AP critic Jonathan Yardley in his Oct. 21, 1998 review, where he also asserted that the novel, while “quite engaging,” “pretty much falls to pieces in its second half.”
Thompson's eye for the ludicrous and incongruous obviously was already developed at this early stage in his career, and so too was his acidulous pen, adds AP. "What passed for society was a loud, giddy whirl of thieves and pretentious hustlers, a dull sideshow full of quacks and philistines with gimp mentalities," added Thompson to AP. Depp as Thompson is captivated by a tiny island called Vieques in 1960. He was moonlighting for a rich, corrupt developer played flawlessly by Aaron Eckhart. In his novel “The Rum Diary.” Thompson writes, “I was being paid $25 a day to ruin the only place I'd seen in ten years where I felt a sense of peace."
The best thing about "The Rum Diary" is that it gives us this side of Thompson without apology, even, I suspect, with a kind of pride, adds AP.
Depp may be the best actor to bring out this hidden side of Thompson. Not only did the two become close friends after Depp portrayed Thompson in the 1998 film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” Depp also had a hand in the publication of the novel, added AP. In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Depp said he discovered the manuscript when visiting the author’s Colorado home.
“I was preparing for "Fear and Loathing," and we were in the war room (at Thompson's house) looking through boxes for the manuscript of "Fear and Loathing," which included, like, cocktail napkins and cherry stems and bandages, and all the weirdest stuff in the world. Suddenly I happened upon this other box that I broke open and, right on top there, stuffed amongst these papers, was "The Rum Diary." And we started reading it, the two of us, cross-legged on the floor. And I said, "Hunter, you're insane, man, this is (expletive) great writing. You need to publish this. I don't care when you wrote it. Let's publish it."
In making the movie, Depp is making good on one of the author’s last wishes — Thompson committed suicide in 2005, at the age of 67. In the end credits, Depp gets the girl, but one senses that Thompson’s life was not easy and the road he travelled as a writer in the ensuing years might also be worth a follow-up film. All in all, “The Rum Diary” is an entertaining look at life in Puerto Rico in 1960, if you happened to be an employed writer with a penchant for rum.
Showtimes For Staten Island
680 Arthur Kill Road, Staten Island, NY
8:10 p.m. and 10:40 p.m.
UA All Staten Island Stadium 16 Theatre
2474 Forest Avenue, Staten Island, NY
4:20 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.
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