I’m all about the characters, and in order to have meaningful characters, you need excellence in the two most important cinematic categories: Script and Actors. 

For anyone who has ever read Hunter S. Thompson, they know its hard for him to get it wrong. A master of raw irony, he bends and twists words into ingenious, melodramatic chaos that comes out smelling like the pleasant potpurri of booze and cigarettes. The Rum Diary is no exception. Thompson tells a story of Paul Kemp, a man in search of his own textual stylings claiming to have no “voice”, but triumphing over his own skepticim through extremely potent alcohol byproducts, LSD and Pueto Rican decadance. And even though the ending may not hail our ‘victor’ with rewards and praise, it leaves us with a satisfying fairwell. The journey is complete, perhaps not as successfully as we hoped, but that is life, that is how its was, how it is, how it was meant to be. 

My first exposure to Hunter S. Thompson was in my early college years. I unforunately didn’t start with a novel, but a movie: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Maybe you’ve head of it? Raw scriptual genious, classic HST, and what I still promote as Johnny’s greatest role to date. Benecio Del Torro and Johnny Depp in a Hunter S. Thompson film demands no less than the chaos and adventure that I experience through that movie. Through dust clouds, WWII, Dinosaur-like monsters and countless other drug induced hallucinations; Depp and Del Torro set a new standard of WOW. What really impressed me with Rum Diary was that, once again, Johnny was able to find that same voice as if no time had passed. He recaptured what made it so great the first time. It was like coming to see an old friend you havn’t spoken to in years and he still continues to make you laugh to the point of urinary disfunciton. His ability to turn a Thompson phrase is as remarkable as ever. My hat goes off to the VERY skilled actor.

So, yes, I got to see Johnny Depp in a another Hunter S. Thompson film. That is why I wanted to see the movie in the first place, I expected them to be as good as I knew they would be. But what really took me off guard was how odious and yet divine each supporting actor played his/her role. Each actor left an impression, an image, that will forever define they’re character and resonate with their audience.