It's conventional wisdom these days that Johnny Depp can do no wrong. The actor has been beloved both by art-movie snobs and the popcorn-loving masses for his ability to bring charming eccentricities to mainstream roles while still retaining his iconoclastic ways in indie movies. No one has cornered the market on demented yet strangely innocent weirdos the way that Depp has.
At first glance, then, The Libertine seems like the perfect Depp vehicle: He plays John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, an actual British nobleman of the 17th century who was well known for both his extraordinary sexual debauchery and his incredibly ribald writings, which included an epic stage production about dildos. Although he's married to a proper lady (Rosamund Pike), Wilmot is liberal with his affections, and soon falls for actress Elizabeth Barry (Samantha Morton).
The first half of the movie is carried along by Depp's charm, which he puts to good use as a sort of dark version of Casanova. At this point the movie is full of possibilities, and director Dunmore's warts-and-all portrait of 17th-century England, all dirt and depression, has a certain admirable verisimilitude about it.
But then things get ugly, and it becomes clear that this isn't going to be a movie about debauchery. Sadly, this is a movie about the consequences of debauchery, and about Johnny Depp making long-winded Oscar-bait speeches while slathered in nasty pancake makeup because Wilmot died of syphilis at the age of 33. By the time Wilmot limps into Parliament to declaim on regal succession, the movie has been drained of all life the way that Dunmore systematically drains his images of color (this is one of the murkiest movies in recent memory).
Depp is fine, but he may finally have reached his limit on demented yet strangely innocent weirdos, and he's upstaged by Morton's quietly effective performance as the woman who sees right through Wilmot's veneer. Unfortunately, what's behind it is pretty dull.