Cast:
Johnny Depp as Kemp
Aaron Eckhart as Sanderson
Michael Rispoli as Sala
Amber Heard as Chenault
Plot: Kemp, a freelance writer, ends up in Puerto Rico where he works for a dead end newspaper crumbling to the ground. More importantly, the culture that surrounds the isle of Puerto Rico is what consumes him to be better and gets him in tons of trouble along the way.
Review: In what had a lot of potential to be a great movie, with lots of great actors involved all around, The Rum Diary fell short of being something great. I left the theater with a feeling of sub-par to borderline just OK. With actors like Johnny Depp and Aaron Eckhart (one of my favorites) it's hard to imagine a movie like this falling short but it did.
The acting is great, the characters are great. They're lively, they're memorable. Depp, just like in mostly every movie he's in, leaves an impact. Eckhart very much does the same, though I find him to be much more versatile then Depp because Eckhart plays good guys and bad guys almost equally. Amber Heard does a good job selling the kind of loose, undecided kind of woman caught up in a love triangle. One performance that will be getting much recognition is Michael Rispoli as Sala, the photographer of the newspaper that he and Depp work for and essentially Depps sidekick. Some of the best scenes come from when Depp and Rispoli are together. The acting doesn't fall short.
What kind of does fall short is the story. It's hard to say which aspect of the story was meant to come across more. You had the budding relationship between Depp and Heard that you eventually knew was going to happen, the politics of the time period (being the 1960s), the pending status of the newspaper company, the secret deal between Eckhart and Depp (and many other smaller characters). It almost seemed like too much to really put together, to which I was a bit confused on some parts of the story. The ending didn't do much to help. Terrible ending. I'm not sure if they felt that the movie was dragging on too long that they gave us this half-ass'd ending but they left everything hanging.
The movie itself is witty. The dialogue between Depp and Rispoli, Depp and Eckhart, Depp and Richard Jenkins (The boss of the newspaper company). I mean it's some of the better dialogue i've ever heard this year, especially a lot of what Richard Jenkins was imparting on Depp. One scene with Jenkins and Depp where Jenkins was reading one of Depps articles that eventually lead into a very insightful view of live really, it was gold for me.
The rest of it however rubbed me the wrong way. A lot is left unexplained, and with the movie being about 2 hours along, I can only assume it's because the producers and director thought they were running overtime with their film. Overall, that hurts the film and a lot seems rushed for a 2 hour movie. The Rum Diary may still be worth a watch but I wouldn't go rushing to see it.
Rating: 3 out of 5
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