Directed by Bob Yari, the film is built around a true story of a Miami journalist, Denne Bart Petitclerc, who was befriended by the author and invited to Cuba, where he became close to Hemingway and his wife, Mary. Petitclerc died after writing the screenplay. The authenticity of the surroundings helps give the film a aura of reality as we watch a depiction of bizarre behavior by the renowned writer, especially when he gets drunk and angry. The Hemingway saga is interwoven with real events in Cuba.

The reporter in the film is named Ed Myers, nicely played with understatement by Giovanni Ribisi, and the relationship that builds is a generally warm one, at least until Hemingway becomes furious with the erroneous belief that Meyers has betrayed him to an FBI agent who is convinced (correctly in this account) that Hemingway has been running guns to help those resisting the old Batista regime before its overthrow. It is implied that J. Edgar Hoover is particularly interested in getting revenge against the author. Minka Kelly plays Myers’s girlfriend, whom he loves but to whom he has trouble committing and whose patience is tried.

Joely Richardson portrays Mary, Hemingway’s fourth wife, who in this interpretation is shown enduring the author’s wrathful abuse and faithfully caring for him even though she feels he doesn’t love her.

Sparks in the Hemingway role suggests Hemingway’s larger-than-life character, who loves to fish, is a hard drinker, flaunts trying to be macho and has fits of rage, especially when he has writer’s block. He is the man of adventure who has seen better days. He is self-loathing and suicidal and keeps a gun handy, which in one tense scene he threatens to use on himself. (Ultimately he did shoot and kill himself in Idaho.)