The Rum Diary

An outlet exists for the transmitting of information in Puerto Rico, a newspaper, thoroughly saturated with colonialist prejudices, at which a journalist interested in reaching out to the people finds employment. When not engaging in the act of writing, the adventurous observer explores his surroundings making friends, experiencing difficulties, encountering the well-to-do, and cultivating his desire. The love interest in question's disposition is strong and free, committed and versatile and capable of viscerally understanding the repressed needs of an impoverished body politic, to which she responds charismatically. The well-to-do see land on which hotels can be built regardless of the fact that people already live there. Difficulties arise based on socio-political differences which necessitate miscalculations in regards to the motivations of representatives of the dominant group on the part of the oppressed. Friends possess grassroots contacts, cultural leverage, and corresponding instinctual insights. From these particularities a story takes shape into which an historical approach coalesces with the habitualizations of the new to generate a point of divergence. But in order for this point to be transmitted ruptures within the traditional order of things must be accepted by the powers that be whose interests are lined up to the contrary. With nothing but conviction and a creative solution Kemp (Johnny Depp) attempts to take control of the means of production in order to nurture the needs of the many (and expose the will of the few).

The Rum Diary is an effective examination of the ways in which a talented writer lives in the moment in order to utilize its strengths in the expression of his art, blurring the line between reality and fiction. Accentuating the difficulties associated with establishing an enduring point of reference while using both rigid oppositions and malleable characterizations to motivate the action, it functions as both a playful poetic capriciously altruistic romance and a harsh stubborn warning as it investigates the relationship between young and old professionals. A remarkably sober structure for a film wherein the major characters regularly abuse substances, its pacing successfully introduces episodic crescendos, comic staccatos, and tragic climactic allegros. Nice to see more of a focus on Hunter S. Thompson the writer within, as his stand-in intuitively stumbles from one scoop to the next.