The Depp and Jolie show

The Tourist (2010)
Certified: PG
Duration: 103 minutes
Directed by: Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, Steven Berkoff, Rufus Sewell, Timothy Dalton, Haley Webb, Christian De Sica and Raoul Bova
KRS release

The Tourist is light and classy, sophisticated and fluffy. It’s James Bond-light, Salt with a whiff of expensive perfume, Mr and Mrs Smith without all the gunfire. It’s basically a showboating trip for the two stars that the fans will lap up in what is perfect Xmas-marquee-pulling moviemaking.

This is the kind of film where the actors seem to be having fun, their characters seem to be just simple unwieldy camouflage for their celebrity personas who seem to own the film even though not really generating all that effort. Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck’s first English feature film is a remake of the 2005 French film of the same name. We first meet with Angelina Jolie … erm, sorry … Elise, an elegant, sexy woman who turns male heads with every step she takes, when she is given a note which has some secret instructions. Under surveillance, she burns the note, manages to escape and is soon on board a train. Her lover is the infamous thief Alexander Pierce, about whom we are told but do not see, who owes about £700 million and is on the run. He has been through a very expensive surgery and thus no-one can recognise him. Under the leadership of the obsessed Acheson (Paul Bettany), Scotland Yard are following Elise, who as Alexander’s former girlfriend cold lead them to the new “Alexander”. Meanwhile, also hot on the heels of Elise is Shaw (Steven Berkoff), an English crime boss who surrounds himself with Russians and was once robbed of about $2 million by Pierce. Elisa follows instructions and picks up a man of the same build and height of Pierce so as to mislead Scotland Yard.

The choice falls on Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp), an American tourist from Wisconsin who works as a maths teacher. When the “ravenous” Elise takes an interest in him, it’s understandable that he is left speechless. Soon he is sharing a dinner, a hotel suite, boat rides, bullets, boat chases and rooftop antics with her. It’s hard to believe that director Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck is the same director of the excellent The Lives of Others (2006), which went on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. While the film is a classy affair, has its fair share of Hitchcock influences and has a star-studded couple, it does not live up to what were the expectations of the director who here falls short of his debut feature. He directs as if in awe of his stars and never really keeps a tight control of proceedings.

Angelina Jolie has never looked more classy and elegant. The camera loves her and she knows it, and without any particular effort she literally smoulders the screen to ashes. It’s more to her merit than the events on screen that male audiences’ hearts are racing. The on-screen chemistry between her and a scruffy-looking Johnny Depp is quite tangible. Without any of the caricature that we find in The Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp is having quite a time as he plays dazed and confused quite well. Paul Bettany is as unlikable as they come; Timothy Dalton has quite a nice cameo while Christian De Sica’s cameo is quite entertaining. The Tourist looks good with splendid vistas, rich surroundings and a Venice that is simply eye-catching and a tourist’s dream. Jolie and Depp provide both light sensuality and laughs, style and action in what is a teasing game between two superstars.