The Rum Diary

I have always enjoyed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Terry Gilliam's bizarre visuals blew me away as a youngster and Johnny Depp's penchant for weirdness was still the defining aspect of his career (remember, this was pre-effeminate-pirate Depp).  While watching the Criterion Collection for F&LiLV, I got to learn a bit about the behind-the-scenes friendship that was formed between Depp and Hunter S. Thompson, F&L's author and the basis for Depp's character.  It's an interesting collection of extras, with Thompson's incomprehensible commentary track and Depp reading his correspondence to Hunter as the primary highlights.   I also learned that Thompson emits random squeals in the middle of conversations and then continues as if nothing had happened; this was so amusing to me and my friends that we nicknamed my car (which frequently had loose belts) "Hunter."

A car only slightly more reliable than my Hunter

The Rum Diary was announced back in 2000, but was stuck in development hell for more than a decade before its eventual release in October 2011.  In the intervening decade, stars dropped in and out of the project, with Johnny Depp being the only constant.  When Thompson died in 2005 (with Depp funding the utterly ridiculous project to disperse his cremains), I was worried that this film would never be made.  When it came out, though, I was worried for a different reason.  Given Hunter's recent passing, The Rum Diary might have become sentimental and not stay true to the bizarre Hunter S. style.  I didn't hear much buzz about the movie, so I waited to watch it, fearing that I may have been right.  For once.

The Rum Diaries follows the exploits of journalist and obvious Hunter S. Thompson analogue Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) in the late 1950s.  Kemp has traveled to Puerto Rico for a job on a San Juan newspaper, where he is quickly introduced to a few well-known local facts.  First of all, the newspaper is floundering and will probably shut down in a matter of weeks.  Second, Puerto Rico at this time was sharply split between extreme poverty and an American upper-class of robber barons.  Third, and most important of all, Puerto Rico was an easy place to lose yourself in drugs and booze.

...although finding yourself again ain't always pretty

In this environment, Kemp manages to stumble his way into some interesting situations that test his morals.  Yes, he loves being a worthless drunk and taking hallucinogens, but he still wants to accomplish something...although he's not sure just what that may be yet.  He sees where his path can lead him --- toward the hazy rage of his friend/fellow degenerate, Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi), or into ambivalence, like his other journalist pal, Sala (Michael Rispoli) --- and he doesn't seem determined to avoid that fate.  He also (improbably) falls in with a powerful and obscenely wealthy crowd, thanks to a smooth-talking realtor named Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart).  There, he sees and hears many things, and he realizes how easy it would be to do some very bad things and become very wealthy.  At its core, The Rum Diary has less to do with being drunk on rum (although that is a significant part) and more on a young writer trying to figure out what he wants to become.

Above: scene from an earlier, more depressing, version of Moulin Rouge

The acting in The Rum Diary is good.  If you have seen Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing, there might not be a lot new to see here, but if you haven't, then Depp's immersion in his character is pretty impressive.  This isn't just a Hunter S. Thompson impression, mind you (check out this clip to see how good of an impression it is), it is a fairly complex performance that achieves its goals through monologue overdubs and quiet moments.  Depp is at his most entertaining here when he is being over the top, but his best work is when he is playing up the drama. 

Visual clues: frowny face vs. googly eyes and open mouth

Aaron Eckhart was a great choice to play a yuppie villain.  I thought he was very convincing as a smooth sonuvabitch who got ruthless as soon as his profit/loss balance became unfavorable in any situation.  Michael Rispoli was pretty good as Kemp's main drinking buddy, but he wasn't all that interesting as a character.  Giovanni Ribisi was far more entertaining as a unpredictable drunkard, but his weird voice was a little off-putting.

Unlike his habit of listening to Hitler's speeches on vinyl

Richard Jenkins did a respectable job with a pretty straightforward supporting role.  There were a few other recognizable faces in the cast, including Marshall Bell and Amaury Nolasco in small parts and Amber Heard as Kemp's love interest.  This is, far and away, the best work I have seen from Heard to date.  She was more than just a pretty face here, she was sympathetic and sexy.  Granted, that isn't asking a lot from a professional Hollywood actress, but it was light years beyond what I've seen her in prior to this.

"Hell, yeah, I earned a C+!"

The Rum Diary was written for the screen and directed by Bruce Robinson, and was his first film work in about a decade.  I thought he directed the film well enough.  It has a sleazy, grimy feel to it that was rather fitting.  He didn't coax out any great performances out of this cast, though, and that surprised me; with characters this eccentric, I would have thought someone would go balls-to-the-wall weird, but they never got much further than "peculiar." 

Ribisi earns a runner-up prize, though

That may have been affected by the overall story, though.  This film is missing a sense of purpose.  That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.  Unfortunately, the characters are not charming enough to make you forget that the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere.  If you've read any Hunter S. Thompson, you might recognize that aimlessness as a common theme in his fiction; he eventually gets around to making a point, but the characters are so bizarre and goofy that they're fun to follow, regardless of intent.  Sadly, The Rum Diary is lacking in the fun department, which makes the meandering plot just frustrating.

"You mean...you don't want to see me stumble around drunk for two hours?"

The Rum Diary was written at least a decade before Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, so it's not surprising that the tone and the requisite Hunter S. Thompson-ish character are significantly different in each.  I wish I could stop comparing the two (I suppose I could bring up Where the Buffalo Roam instead), but the two are definitely connected.  As the film comes to a close, the audience starts to realize that this Puerto Rico vacation is what prompted Kemp Thompson to develop his aggressive style of journalism, so he could be a royal pain in the ass of all the bastards he loathed.  But then it ends.  The goal is Thompson finding his writing voice, and that's not a satisfying enough ending for a film that felt lost in its own winding plot.  What does he do with this new-found ability?  Does he dish out sweet justice?  Not really.  The means, in this case, wind up being the end...of the story. 

Getting back to my original worries regarding this film, I think it does suffer from too much nostalgia.  It's competently made, and there are some pretty entertaining bits here and there, but it lacks purpose and passion.  More importantly, it fails to pass on the righteous indignation of its main characters.  If the point of making this movie is to show Hunter S. Thompson's transformation from a fairly regular person to the oddball that he became famous for, then I suppose it is somewhat successful.  It's just not as entertaining to watch as it would be to try and reenact (the rum and women parts, anyway).

Battle: Los Angeles

Okay, so Transformers: Dark of the Moon kind of sucked.  It had all the destruction I could ask for, but it was long and had way too much of what the filmmakers considered "humor" and "plot."  What a let down!  Where's a guy supposed to find a movie about aliens blowing up a US city this summer?  Well...Battle: Los Angeles recently hit DVD.  It couldn't be worse than Transformers 3, could it?  Oh, it's directed by Jonathan Liebesman, the man behind Darkness Falls?  Maybe I spoke too soon.

US Marine Staff Sergent (apparently abbreviated SSgt.) Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) has a severe case of Roger Murtaugh Syndrome.

He's getting too old for this shit.

Not only is he too old, but he even put in his retirement papers!  Today!  Man, I'm going to miss that guy.  Sure, he lost his entire battalion during his last tour of Iraq and all the newbies consider him the Grim Reaper, but he's a pretty nice guy.  It's just too bad that, this close to retirement, a bunch of meteorites crash into the Earth, only a few miles away from most major port cities.  America prepares for some Deep Impact special effects, but they never come.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that the "meteorites" were actually spaceships carrying alien infantry soldiers, bent on destroying humanity. 

Yeah.  I know.  Aliens.  Shit.

SSgt. Nantz is forced back into action under 2nd Lieutenant Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), who has never seen combat, and his crew of green marines.  Their mission is to clear civilians from a certain perimeter in LA before the US launches an air strike that will annihilate the aliens.  But then, it turns out that the aliens look like this:

Oh, and they have alien technology, which kills lots of people.  And it turns out that they have an air force, too, which negates the whole air strike plan.  With his team decimated and humanity quickly approaching extinction, what is SSgt. Nantz to do?

With all the explosions and aliens, I wasn't really expecting much from the actors in this movie.  They didn't give me much, but I was surprised that the acting was decent.  Aaron Eckhart was fine as the conflicted lead, even if this part was written more for someone with the acting range of Jean-Claude Van Damme than a Golden Globe nominee.  Ramon Rodriguez was predictable as the cocky noob leader that loses his composure when things start to go wrong.  Michelle Rodriguez (no relation) played against type by taking the part of an Air Force strategist (or something); of course, it turns out that she's a total bad-ass.  The rest of the cast is pretty inconsequential.  Michael Pena was okay as a concerned father, Bridget Moynahan was a tough lady veterinarian, and Joey King cried a lot as a frightened little girl.  The military cannon fodder supporting cast included such luminaries as career TV bit players Noel Fisher and Jim Parrack, R&B singer Ne-Yo, and Cory Hardrict.  No one was awful, and many characters either spoke little or died horrible deaths.

Does this mean that Two-Face was a result of PTSD?

I was shocked to find that this film was directed by the incompetent Jonathan Liebesman.  While this isn't French New Wave or anything fancy like that, I thought this movie was shot well enough to tell a story.  That might not sound impressive to you, but being mediocre was far from his grasp in the last film of his I watched.  No, the acting isn't great, but it suits its purpose.  This is a movie with mostly unemotional soldiers being attacked by aliens.  Do I need feelings and fancy camera work, or do I need cool-looking alien stuff and lots of explosions?  You're damn right (assuming you went with aliens and boomsplosions)!  The special effects are solid, the action is dirty and gritty, and the aliens don't make me laugh.  There aren't many moments that will wow you, but it's still a solid sci-fi flick.

For what it is, Battle: Los Angeles is a surprisingly decent movie.  It's not intelligent, ground-breaking, or totally awesome, but it tells a story and provides some brainless entertainment, especially for fans of military movies.  Battle: LA spends a lot of time on the bond of trust between soldiers and their leaders, and even if some of it is a little cheesy (and it is), it is effective, in a testosterone-filled, never-speak-your-feelings sort of way.  Maybe I just came into this one with super-low expectations, but I'm going to say this was better than average.

Suspect Zero

To paraphrase the Buzzcocks' immortal question, have you ever fallen in love with something you shouldn't have fallen in love with?  I don't know why, but I really like the idea of the thriller movie genre.  That's unfortunate, because there are damn few good thrillers out there.  Like a love-sick moron, though, I find myself going back to the genre that has treated me bad, time and time again.  I thought that Suspect Zero might be different.  It has Aaron Eckhart, who has been pretty good in the few films of his I've seen, and Ben Kingsley, who is an acclaimed actor, even if I haven't seen him in much.  The director's previous film was the pretty clever Shadow of the Vampire, so that was a promising sign, too.  There are also warning signs that this might not be a good movie.  Tom Cruise produced the film, but had his name removed from the credits.  One of the writers co-wrote X-Men 3, Elektra, and Inspector Gadget.  Yeesh.  What will win, solid acting and directing, or poor writing?

FBI agent Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) has found himself shuffled off to the Phoenix office, which is so lame that they don't have a Starbucks anywhere nearby (hmm...I seriously doubt the truth of that).  Despite the demotion (in stature, if not pay), Mackelway finds himself involved in a serial killer case right off the bat.  The weird thing about this case is that the killer is littering the crime scenes with clues that lead to other crime scenes.  One seemingly dull man is found dead and, at the place where he was last seen, the killer's car is found with another dead body in the trunk, and the body is the first breadcrumb of evidence that leads to several murders across several states.  The dead bodies all have their eyelids cut off and a circle with a line through it found at every scene.  Okay...pretty creepy, right?  Well, it turns out that the killer knows about Mackelway and he starts mailing and faxing him stuff --- seemingly random numbers, missing person reports, and hand-scrawled notes egging him on.  Will Mackelway be able to catch this killer?  Probably, since this is a movie.  The question is, rather, once he finds the killer, will the truth behind the murders lead Mackelway to arrest or help with the next kill?

At least, that's how the synopsis of this movie should go.  Instead, every review, preview, brief summary, and movie trailer for this film explains that the serial killer is murdering other serial killers. 

A killer targeting bad guys?  How novel.

Unfortunately for this movie, that defining plot element isn't revealed until almost an hour into the movie.  Sorry, plot twist, but everybody knows you're coming to the party.  That annoying reveal aside, how does the film fare?

Despite a decent cast, Suspect Zero feels like a B-movie.  As the serial killer, Ben Kingsley succeeds in making his character unsympathetic and inhuman.  Unfortunately, that same alien nature also makes his line delivery suspect, with occasionally shouted lines at inappropriate times.  To tell the truth, it feels like Kingsley is slumming in this role.  Aaron Eckhart is decent enough when he is playing detective, but his character is awfully cliched.  I normally find Eckhart to be inoffensive, but he is forced to overact in this role and I can only take so many shots of him with crazy eyes before I get bored.  Carrie-Anne Moss plays Eckhart's reluctant partner and the window to his "mysterious" past --- her character is more of a convenient way to fill in the character background for Eckhart than anything else, so I suppose she was fine.  The cast is rounded out by a group of recognizable character actors.  Harry Lennix plays the stereotypically not "with it" FBI boss, William Mapother is an inconsequential-to-the-plot FBI agent, and Frank Collison played his typical creepy role.

Collison says you just missed Kingsley, FBI man.  He R-U-N-N-O-F-T.

Director E. Elias Merhige tried to craft a standard thriller with the pieces available to him, but he was working with a pretty ridiculous script.  All the pieces for a crafty thriller are there, with surprising plot reveals that force the characters to make radical decisions, but I don't think Merhige knew what to do with the more Stephen King-ish aspects to the movie.

That's right, this script has some unexplained supernatural phenomena in it, a la Mr. King.  Surprisingly, the script is not based on one of his books, though.  You see, Ben Kingsley's character has the psychic ability to "see" serial killers, but he can't stop "seeing" them, so he has gone off the deep end.  And he apparently can "see" Aaron Eckhart's character, even though he is not a serial killer.  And Aaron Eckhart can kind of "see" things, too.  And sometimes, this "sight" lets them glimpse the future.  Ponder that for a few moments and let it sink in.

Are your detective skills warning you about a bad movie?

Suspect Zero is a surprisingly dumb movie.  The filmmakers took the concept of a serial killer --- and I think we can agree that they're scary because they look like normal people, right? --- and makes the primary killer (Kingsley) very abnormal with his mental abilities.  That's missing the appeal of the concept in a very basic way.  And how about those mental abilities?  Kingsley sees into the minds of serial killers --- except when he's looking at a good FBI agent! --- and can see into the future, which nothing to do with connecting his mind to another person's.  I get it, I get it, if you're willing to swallow the clairvoyant serial killer bit, it's not much more of a stretch to add "prescient" to his resume.  It's still silly and lame.  And I absolutely love that Eckhart's apparent psychic power is never explained and nobody seems very interested in it.  Ugh.  This movie stirs up my bile.

The worst thing about Suspect Zero is that it fails with even the most modest of goals.  It never tries to be terribly interesting or competent, it just wants to be a mediocre thriller that will periodically wind up on SyFy at 3AM.  If the whole psychic thing was played up a bit more as the reason this movie is special, then I might have another opinion, but the film was emphasizes the whole serial killer killing serial killers bit.  That seemingly can't miss formula --- twice the crazy killers = twice as awesome --- can't succeed if the killers are free of personality and/or believability.  On the bright side, there is a scene that implies bestiality with a donkey, which most serial killer movies don't have.  There are also a few idiotic timing/editing mistakes that I found very enjoyable; the best was Kingsley's first kill, where he left a building after his prey and still managed to sneak into the back seat of his victim's car without the victim (who walked directly to his vehicle) noticing.  These occasional lapses in quality control are really the only things that entertained me in this movie.

If you're not familiar with the Buzzcocks, here's a video of the band in their late-70s prime.  It doesn't really have anything to do with Suspect Zero, but it kept popping up in my head while writing this review, and that's all the excuse I need.