When I first heard that the director of Withnail and I was making a film of Hunter S. Thompson’s book The Rum Diary, starring Johnny Depp, I was excited. Then I had to wait about three years, because that’s about how long it takes to make a movie.

So it was pretty hyped up in my head. Although I managed never to read the book, or a summary, or any other details about the film before I saw it. So it took me a small while to realise that the main character isn’t actually Hunter S. Thompson, but a fictional man called Paul Kemp.

I blame Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’s gonzo style for mixing reality and fiction (and drugs!) in such a confusing way that I just presumed that nothing was what it seemed. Anyway it seems that it is, in fact, what it seemed.

Johnny Depp plays Paul Kemp, a journalist, who moves to Puerto Rico to work at a failing local newspaper.

He meets a couple of kindred spirits in Sala; another alcoholic journalist, played by Michael Rispoli, and Moburg; an alcoholic Swedish Nazi journalist, played by Giovanni Ribisi in a way very reminiscent of Peter Stormare, who played ALL the Russians in the nineties.

Despite the fact that he’s Swedish. Like Moburg. You see? Anyway, Amber Heard plays the obligatory love interest, Chenault; a two-dimensional sexy woman character, who is initially involved with another of Kemp’s employers, Sanderson, played by Aaron Eckhart, who my brain keeps trying to convince me is Denis Leary with a bum on his face. Kemp decides he wants Chenault, and conflict ensues. 

The novel was written by a 22 year old HST, before he became the drug-addled maniac of the Fear and Loathing days, so the character Paul Kemp is basically a young version of himself, with only the severe alcoholism to hint at things to come.

It’s impossible not to compare this film to Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That was was an incredibly surreal, drug-fueled ramble through expanded consciousness, but in The Rum Diary they only do ONE drug. One! And booze. Lots of booze. So if people are expecting that kind of craziness, they might be disappointed.

The Rum Diary is a pretty chilled-out account of a segment of the life of a hard-drinking reprobate journalist. It’s not his whole life, it’s not a neatly-wrapped bundle, and I think that makes it a more realistic story. Although I am going to pretend I didn’t see the little text epilogue they stuck on the end. It’s worth watching. I think you’ll like it. 7/10

See this if you liked Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Withnail and I, Where the Buffalo Roam.

Tanya Branagan