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Movie Review: The Rum Diary

    Hey, everyone. A few months ago, Carley and I were planning on going to the theater and seeing the Johnny Depp movie called The Rum Diary. Due to work schedules and stuff, we didn't get that done so I just bought the DVD last night.
     This movie was adapted from the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, a journalist. It is the story of a failed novelist and on-the-skids reporter who grabs a last-chance job with a struggling paper in San Juan, Puerto Rico. First of all, let me say that I love the beach, warm weather and all things tropical, so it was good for me to have a movie to watch concerning a place like San Juan. I gazed fondly at some of the scenery and daydreamed of having my own island retreat.
   Johnny Depp stars as the above-mentioned reporter. His stay on the island gets off to a rapid start when a guy named Sanderson hires him to write promotional material for a planned resort complex. The development team wants to make millions and Paul Kemp (Depp) needs the money, so he agrees. Sanderson provides Depp with a car to drive (1956 Corvette Convertible, hot), a girl ( Chenault, played by Amber Heard, very hot) and a flair of passion to fight against the big guys in life. He starts to write articles about corruption and idealistic sorts of things. He even manages to cut back on the booze.
    Then things start to deteriorate. The group goes to Carnival and the partying gets out of hand. Chenault gets drunk and a bit wild, Sanderson dumps both her and Paul, and the police are searching for the reporter on an earlier beef. The warrant for Paul involves charges of drinking pure grain alcohol, then breathing through a lighter to blow fire onto a policeman. No, I'm not kidding.
    Paul's efforts to save a struggling newspaper is the main thrust of the story, I guess. The movie is different, a little slow on the action and lasts two hours. Carley went to sleep in her recliner at the half-way point. I liked it okay but if I knew beforehand what it was like, I probably would have watched it on HBO. This movie brings to mind some of Hemingway's work, which I've read and enjoyed somewhat. It is slow, though. I tried to make it a tropical night at the green retreat. I watched this movie, drank some Banana Daiquiris and ate a bunch of spicy food. We had hot wings, spicy egg rolls full of all manner of things, honey-chipolte ribs  and a lot of other food which I can't remember clearly.
     This movie is centered around 1960 and has some nice memories of things from that period. Richard Nixon on TV and Depp's prediction that Kennedy would win the election, things like that. The author, Hunter S. Thompson, is an interesting character. There are a couple of features on the DVD about him that I enjoyed, since I'm a writer. I think that he is the same dude that wrote a book on the Hell's Angels, back in the 1960's, which I read. If it's the one I'm thinking of, he lived with the group for a while and gave an insider's look at the famed motorcycle gang. It was considered quite risque at the time.
      From the author's green retreat, I'm CE Wills.  
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