Showing @ Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, until Thu 24 Nov

Bruce Robinson / USA / 2011 / 120 mins

Johnny Depp returns to his Fear and Loathing days to star in Bruce Robinson’s hectic adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1961 novel (though it wasn’t published until 1998). Similar to the character of John Berlin in Robinson’s previous film Jennifer 8, Depp stars as American journalist Paul Kemp, a man looking for something off the beaten track in the form of a failing Puerto Rican newspaper The San Juan Star. As he struggles to balance his own liberal attitudes towards life there against the populist nature of the paper, Robinson tracks his slide into shady operations and gonzo journalism.

As in Robinson’s directorial debut Withnail & I, to play the drink-when-they-drink game in this film would land the best of us in hospital. Undercutting much of the action is the portrait of how journalists cope with such exhausting lifestyles, writing bullshit to tight deadlines and sweating in the Caribbean heat. Robinson clashes this well against the idyllic landscape – rolling waves cresting the sunlit beach, the sleek, indulgent apartments inhabited by the crooked tycoons who run the island. So it’s a chance to run between the cobbled side streets of Puerto Rico with Depp and view the investment island the way so many tourists and industrio-developers did; and with that comes a quite intriguing take on Thompson’s novel.