‘Rum Diary’ film a drunken, good insight to life

"I've got no voice, I don't know how to write like me," says journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) in the film "The Rum Diary."

Paul is a man at a crossroads in life, wondering if he has a place in the world. "The Rum Diary," directed by Bruce Robinson, is an exploration of life in the late 1950s, and what it is like to be afraid of growing old. Also, there's a lot of heavy drinking involved.

Paul moves from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico in order to work for a failing newspaper called the San Juan Star. He meets an eclectic group of characters who work for the paper. Edward Lotterman (Richard Jenkins), the Editor in Chief, hires Paul because half of his staff has become pathetic alcoholics.

Paul is interested in practicing legitimate journalism for the paper, but he soon learns that the Star is not interested in printing actual news. The paper is mostly read by Americans who vacation in Puerto Rican casinos and hotels. When Paul tries to write a story about the extreme poverty and mistreatment of the local islanders, Edward tells him "These people don't want to know who the losers are, they want to know who won."

The characters Paul meets during the course of the movie represent three different paths he could take in life. Bob Sala (Michael Rispoli) is a photographer who came to the island with similar aspirations as Paul, but has become fed up with it and wants to move on to better things. Bob's roommate, Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi), is a journalist who has completely gone off the deep end, drinking himself to death and rarely making appearances in the daylight. On the other side of things there's Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), a rich, corrupt businessman who has taken advantage of Puerto Rico and needs Paul's help to write positive things about a group of hotels he's planning to build on the island.

Along the course of the movie, Paul visits each possible path, drinking to excess like Moberg, feeling like he's destined for better things like Bob and contemplating taking advantage of the Puerto Ricans for personal gain like Sanderson.

There is also a love story between Paul and Sanderson's fiance Chenault (Amber Heard). The love story is fairly weak in this film, mostly involving Heard and Depp staring longingly at each other. Their love seems to be based entirely on the fact that they are both extremely attractive, and therefore should be together.

However, the weak love story is simply an attempt by the filmmakers to put an underlying structure beneath the source material written by Hunter S. Thompson, a book which was decidedly unstructured. Similar to the previous adaptation of Thompson's work "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (also starring Depp), the times when the film truly shines are the moments in which Depp is allowed to descend fully into madness.

There are scenes with fire-breathing, acid-tripping, car chases and absolute drunken insanity which are a blast to watch. Depp, a close friend of Thompson's when he was alive, once again does a fantastic job of imitating his unique personality and perception of the world.

This film is more about a time, a setting and a feeling than it is about a plot. If anyone has ever felt conflicted about where they are going in life, or felt unhappy with the state of things, they will be able to connect with this movie. This film is also bound to make everyone want to visit beautiful Puerto Rico — just as long as they make sure to take it easy on the rum.

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