CAST: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Rufus Sewell,Timothy Dalton, Ralf Moeller, Raoul Bova, Steven Berkoff,Clément Sibony, Igor Jijikine; DIRECTOR: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; WRITER: Julian Fellowes, Christopher McQuarrie, Jeffrey Nachmanoff; GENRE: Drama, Suspense/Thriller; RUNNING TIME: 103 min.
Technical: 3.5
Moral: 2.5
CINEMA Rating: Age 14 and above
Pursued by Scotland Yard, Englishman Alexander Pearce is in hiding, having stolen 740 million dollars from an English gangster in the past. Interpol and a few Italian cops on the corrupt side are tailing Pearce’s girlfriend Elise Ward (Angelina Jolie) in the hope of pinning the fraudster down. Pearce sends Elise a note instructing her to take a train to Venice, pick up a passenger who matches his weight and height proportions, and take the stranger with her to her hotel room to fool the agents into thinking he is Pearce after changing his face through plastic surgery. Once the decoy is arrested, Pearce and Elise can escape their pursuers to be together. On the train, Elise finds and picks up Frank Tupello (Johnny Depp), an American math teacher from Wisconsin holidaying in Europe to nurse a broken heart, who easily falls into the trap. Elise engages Frank in a passionate kiss by the window, knowing she is the under constant surveillance by the agents, thus setting off a chase to get the wrong guy. Elise leaves the sleeping Frank the following morning, but Frank, bewitched by Elise, is determined to find her while running for his dear life.
The Tourist is the kind of movie you may want to see twice to get right, yet two viewings won’t guarantee you certainty that you indeed have it right. Credit that to the implausible plot and the great acting especially of Depp and Jolie that will have the viewer believing the story is really what it seems. The major twist towards the end might make you come to your own conclusions, but not quite so. Hold it, put your thinking mechanism on auto pilot, and just enjoy the suspenseful fluff. Take the train ride for free; explore the side streets and have a splash on the canals of Venice in a boat with an elegant Jolie at the wheel; check in at the plush Danieli (and note how Americans are an amusement on that part of the globe); dare to chase the barefooted Depp traipsing the rooftops in his pajamas—after all The Tourist is technically superb, from the cinematography to costumes. (Yes, drool over la Jolie’s gowns which she displays to best advantage as she sashays through life as though the world’s admiration is her birth right. It might as well be). It’s an entertaining remake of a 2005 French movie, Anthony Zimmer, with more comic touches added by the new writers Florian Henckel von Donnersmark andChristopher Macquarrie. If at the end you feel you’ve been had, blame the clever direction of von Donnersmark who won the Oscar and universal fame for his first feature film The Lives of Others. The Tourist is but his second; imagine what the next would be.
The theme, the war among thugs and fraudsters killing and getting killed over money may be serious, but because of its light treatment it might not be worthwhile to discuss the morality, immorality or amorality the movie displays. Suffice it to say that stealing is bad, even if it’s stealing from a bad man; killing is bad, even if you’re killing your inefficient employee. And what of returning the money stolen? Is that good? Reality check: why would a thief do that? But it happens in The Tourist. Nobody says it’s a true story.—By Teresa R. Tunay, OCDS
