The Rum Diary (Bruce Robinson, 2011)

The director of Withnail & I adapts a Hunter S. Thompson novel, and Johnny Depp reprises Thompson's gonzo alter ego from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, albeit in an embryonic, more moderate form. It ought to be gold, instead it ends up less than the sum of such formidable parts. Depp's journalist is in capitalist-plundered Puerto Rico in the heady days of 1960 and of course a drunk, but nowhere near as uncontrollably OTT as Raoul Duke or Withnail, and more's the pity. Various other hacks are tasked with filling the debauchery gap, but that misses the point: the pleasure of Terry Gilliam's 1998 take on the Thompson character did not lie principally in the methodical self-mashing, but in the mordant cynicism that he used to justify his to-hell-in-a-handcart world view. Here, the wit is largely reduced to muttered asides by Depp in the gaps between assorted mild shenanigans. It's amiable where it should have been side-splitting.

6/10