New Delhi: The movie disappoints. Probably with Johnny Depp on a poster that looks nothing like the prequel or sequel to the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ or 'Edward Scissorhands' – one expects a solid acting front. And in that tangent of thought – ‘The Rum Diary’ leaves one with this faint sense of irritation.
The audience wait till the last moment expecting something larger than life from Johnny Depp – one moment of stellar brilliance or one scene that turns the movie on its head. Perhaps that is the modus operandi of the director and the movie ends just as abruptly as it began.
'The Rum Diary' is a creation of a writer-journalist Hunter Stockton Thompson who also wrote another Johnny Depp hit – ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. He is credited to be the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. And that is exactly what director Bruce Robinson does with the movie. Hunter Thompson becomes Paul Kemp – the American journalist who goes to Puerto Rico to work with a newspaper – The San Juan Star, and gets involved with the expatriates living there who are minting money from the poor locals. Real Estate is the king and Kemp stumbles through his time in Puerto Rico drunk, high, exceedingly lost.
Straight out of New York, Kemp is placed bang in the middle of Rum punch drunk San Juan and just as the opening scene of the movie – the whole chapter in Puerto Rico seems like one long hangover. Struggling with fake horoscopes in a newspaper that is about to shut down to crushing heavily on the girlfriend Chenault (Amber Heard) of the local big-shot Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart) and getting dragged in to joining troops with the land-mafia of sorts to make a hotel on an island that the US was using as a naval-test base – Kemp has his hands full.
The characters are brilliant sketches – Moburg (Giovanni Ribisi) and Sala (Michael Rispoli), even Sanderson and the Editor-in-Chief Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) are like happy sidekicks of adventure stories that one would remember. But Kemp is sadly lost between them all.
As a writer forced to be a journalist – the scope of angst is tremendous. For writers and journalists are not the same people. When Kemp sits in front of his faded blue typewriter to scream out in ink at the evils that plague the poor locals of Puerto Rico – the fishermen who’s kids are forced to scavenge – the land mafia and the Editor-in-Chief who leaves the newspaper in ruins and escapes to Miami – the novelist takes the reigns and it is nothing short of sheer brilliance.
Kemp's attempt to avenge the lost San Juan Star cause is much like the movie – an empty room left bereft of the printing machines with stray pieces of paper. The stray pieces of paper that come from the novelist Kemp are the only bits of bliss in this chaos.
Chenault is incredibly sexy and her white attires with the sultry red lipstick is very Marilyn Monroe reminiscent – but her sex appeal collides against Kemps’ bumbling reactions and dies out like the eye-drop drug high.
Paul Kemp is a watered down Mad Hatter in normal clothes and no hats. The same expressions, the same sudden moments of zest but well…we are not on the high seas or Wonderland, ‘high’ yes…the rest? No.
Johnny Depp has carved a fantastic niche for himself that no other can ever fit in to in the Hollywood playground. Quirky characters and intoxicants seem to be his lifeline for roles. ‘The Rum Dairy’ is perhaps an ode to Depp’s quirks.
The movie is worth the weight for the angst of the novelist Kemp and the very 'Motorcycle Diaries' type romantic portrayal of Puerto Rico – the cock-fights, the carnivals, the free flowing rum, the tropical, exotic, dusty land where power and money dictates every step.
Comments
0 comment