the dark Written
last year, I knew Johnny Depp was going to have the Rum Diary. I remember being really excited when I saw the combination of "Rum" and "Depp". Now, after watching the movie, the difference is a little bigger than what I expected at the beginning. Or rather, very weak.
The script of the film is adapted from the novel of the same name by Hunter S Thompson, the American writer and founder of "Absurd News". Thompson himself is an absurd and uninhibited legend. It is said that Thompson chose the same method of suicide as Hemingway, sticking a gun in his mouth and blowing his head off. As a fan of Thompson, Depp has appeared for the second time in a movie adapted from an idol's novel, so his identification with the idol's work and style is also evident. For a long time, the word "uninhibited" has been Johnny Depp's label and a weapon for walking the rivers and lakes. It can be seen that this time Depp, as a producer, originally intended to make the film into a work that was consistent in form with his own wild style, but also made breakthroughs in depth. A mistake in director choice led to the final backfire.
The director and screenwriter of Bruce Robinson's last film was 1992's "Murder of the Blind Woman." Nearly twenty years have passed since "The Rum Diary", and it is believed that film directing as a craft has become rusty in Robinson's hands. Everyone on earth knows that there is no good movie without a good script. It is said that Robinson, who has quit drinking for many years, once had to rely on a drink to find his creative state. The original novel is in hand, and the script adaptation is still difficult to find. It can be seen that Robinson's screenwriting level is indeed average.
In terms of plot, the main line of the film should have been the struggle between journalist Paul Camp and the group that controlled the local media and newspapers and achieved their interests with uncompromising means. As well as the love story with the stunner Chenault, it should be laid out as a "sideline" for the character shaping of the protagonist Camp and the plot of the film. And what we see as a result is that Camp's slutty and purposeless life has been told throughout the film's three-quarters of the time. He goes with the flow, and seeks advantages and avoids disadvantages, without any spiritual essence of "cool" and "uninhibited", only seeing the silence, complaining, chattering and winking of an alcoholic. In the remaining twenty minutes, the protagonist Camp's professional ethics as a reporter was finally awakened by the two-tailed lobster. This irresponsible plot setting did not pave the way for Camp's spiritual awakening, and also made the development of the overall plot of the film lose its focus.
A movie that has no main line and loses its focus is only left to play. There are picturesque islands of Puerto Rico, crime and religious affairs reporters who are both mentally ill and outcast, psychic mediums that look like Pirates of the Caribbean, cockfights just for cockfighting, and romantic A solid love story. Could it be that this is the so-called victory of the details. What's even more difficult to understand is that after Camp and his colleagues have gone through many setbacks and won the capital for justice through the cockfighting competition, because the machine for printing newspapers was gone, Camp, who was originally the incarnation of justice, chose to retreat bravely. At this point, the screen reads "Camp and Chenot back in New York tie the knot and become popular journalists." The movie ends in the most unreliable scene.
I don't know if Johnny Depp is happy with the movie, or if he just loves the prodigal image, whatever you drink bullshit.
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