It is not fair to criticise Bruce Robinson’s movie for being winding and soupy when Hunter S. Thompson’s novel The Rum Diary is itself a winding, alcoholic soup of love affairs and moral prevarication. The film, which is set in the sixties and follows journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) as he relocates from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, is sort of about everything Hunter S. Thompson was interested in: the Eisenhower administration, Puerto Rico, gentrification, love, fantasy, drugs, alcohol, journalism, intelligence, growing old. The aesthetic meanderings of the film (camp Baywatch scenes with Amber Heard which turn into gritty close ups of cockfighting) are appropriate, being applied as they are to Thompson’s meandering mind. Yet unlike the novel, the film doesn’t eventually conclude with a cohesive identity.

It is a flexible film is, evident from the huge range of production companies that showed interest in making it – indie to Warner. That it was even made is largely attributable to Hunter S. Thompson’s involvement in the process (“Okay you lazy bitch, I’m getting tired of this waterhead fuckaround,” he is said to have written in a fax to the film’s then producer Holly Sorenson). So the fact that it is not only finished, but nice to look at, funny a lot of the time, and definitely the only one of its kind, is not just commendable, but fair near miraculous. Also, there are some really brilliant scenes in the movie. Two specifically come to mind: the first involving a hilarious drug-induced hallucination, the second a homo-erotic journey in a car.

That said, it is definitely problematic that the movie does not consistently carry the viewer with it on its rambles. It is only really at the end of The Rum Diary that one realises the point of the title is that Paul Kemp has a writer’s block and we’re accessing his diary. Until that point, Johnny Depp hardly even gestures towards the typewriter. Also, one of the two brilliant scenes is in the trailer. So you could just watch that.