When thinking of Johnny Depp, often the term “frequent collaborator” comes with a mixed-to-negative connotation. Tim Burton? Great in the early years, spotty as time wears on (personal bias: the Mad Hatter make-up is unforgivable). Gore Verbinski? Let’s just say if they gave an Oscar for making Keith Richards even more of a cartoon, Depp and Verbinski would be the forerunners in the field.
The shining exception to that rule, and granted this steps out of the filmic context and applies to many real life roles, would be the late great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Depp first played the father of Gonzo journalism in Terry Gilliam’s 1997 adaptation of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” following a several month stint during which Depp lived in Thompson’s basement, bonding over drugs and firearms as Depp learned Thompson’s mannerisms.
While that film’s cult following has made it a rite of passage in some circles, the critical response was less than glowing. Regardless of the inevitable hating of those viewers and critics outside of the drug culture, Gilliam’s film succeeded in capturing the chaotic psychedelia of Thompson’s novel.
Depp’s turn in “The Rum Dairy,” the recent adaptation of Thompson’s “lost” first novel, comes then as a sort of precursor and fitting antecedent to his turn as Raoul Duke. While Duke of the prior book and film presented an addled cynicism and atavism for the eventual casualties of the acid generation, Paul Kemp instead embodies a mainstream journalistic ambition to tackle the “bastards” of society at large. While the character in the novel is 23, Depp at a youthful 48 presents him as anything but middle aged with vigor and a true lust for life.
Whereas one could compare these adaptations, such discussion is fruitless. The decade in between their timelines, those ever-swinging sixties, is a sort of deified touchstone in the Thompson universe, and while the Jefferson Airplane-Lyle Lovett-Flea sequence of “Fear and Loathing” touches upon this, the transition of the thinly-veiled meta-Thompson of “The Rum Diary” to “Fear and Loathing” is so total that the characters are truly two equally captivating individuals.
As the de facto stand-in for Thompson and an intimate friend until Thompson’s suicide in 2005, Depp channels the more focused side of Thompson as Kemp, who ends up as a stringer and astrology columnist in Puerto Rico after bottoming out in the New York scene. As one of a sordid cast of alcoholic ne’er-do-wells Kemp first indulges in then rebels against the American expatriate wiles of the island state, colluding in shady business deals and consuming 480 proof alcohol brewed by a dubious neo-Nazi burnout (Giovanni Ribisi in a stand-out role).
Like many modernist tales, Kemp’s struggle with privileged society is complicated by a love triangle, whose role in both the novel and film drags the plot down but provides eye candy both in the sequences of Carnival in Saint-Tropez and in Chenault (Amber Heard), the object of Kemp’s affection. The problem is not so much the performance of Heard or Aaron Eckhart, who plays her affluent beau and Kemp’s benefactor, Sanderson, but rather the total lack of chemistry between the two on screen. One could argue this is intentional to show Kemp as the more vital suitor, but it makes for tepid viewing when even Depp and Heard lack much of a spark, either.
The on-location shots in Puerto Rico are the true stars of the film, and while the time-appropriate doctoring of buildings, costumes and vehicles sets the film as of a bygone age, the ongoing struggles which American colonialism foists on the indigenous peoples of the land provide a subtle, underlying conflict to bolster Kemp’s personal vendetta against Sanderson and his ilk. Kemp’s discovery of the extreme poverty, racial tensions and exploitation in the area fuels the potential dissolution that would temper Thompson’s own embittered outcries against Nixon, Vietnam, yuppies and George Bush. The tacked-on epilogue of the film echoes this sentiment but also betrays the life of Thompson and the trajectory of Kemp as set forth in the book.
Director Bruce Robinson’s ambition shows throughout the film as a more consistent hand than that of Gilliam, but this causes the film to drag in the absence of the zany ephemera of the earlier film. Robinson constructs a believable film world but misses opportunities to overload the viewer with the absurdity as set down by Thompson. Observe Ribisi’s Moburg, who dons an SS uniform and listens to recordings of Hitler to Kemp’s dismay. Moburg also provides the mythical alcohol which doubles as an incendiary device, but exists as a fringe character in the narrative and perhaps the sole source of offbeat comedy which came as second nature to Thompson the man and author.
While “The Rum Diary” will not cultivate the following of its sibling Thompson adaptation, the film’s standalone spirit of moral outrage among even the derelict outcasts of society nonetheless fuels an adventure worth the cost of admission. As Duke would say, “buy the ticket, take the ride.”
Four stars
