For the life of me I can’t think of a director taking a more dramatic turn from one film to the next than Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has done moving from his fantastic 2007 Oscar-winning foreign language feature The Lives of Others to this dim-witted and dull rom-com actioner. The Tourist tries its hand at every trick in the book and comes up empty each and every time. Whether Henckel von Donnersmarck is going for laughs, love or excitement the bored and stone-faced expressions of his actors leaves the film falling flat.
The Tourist is a nothing movie. What is it exactly? A spy thriller? A romance? A case of mistaken identity? A comedy of bumbling buffoonery? It certainly makes an effort at all of these things from the first moment we’re introduced to Angelina Jolie’s Elise, a woman of mystery whose every move is being watched. The authorities are hoping for a glimpse of Elise’s anonymous male counterpart, Alexander Pearce, a ghost of a man wanted by the Brits for taxes owed and by a gangster just looking to get back the 2.3 billion pounds Pearce stole from him.
Enter Johnny Depp as Frank, an American tourist and math teacer. Elise purposely bumps into Frank on a train leaving from Paris to Venice in an effort to throw those following her off the scent. Through a series of mishaps and happy accidents the two ultimately end up inseparable and thus the story is told. Frank will run across rooftops and Jolie will wear shoulder bearing dresses that will have all of Venice turning their heads while Paul Bettany leads a group of Interpol agents around trying to figure out who the real Alexander Pearce actually is.
The goal here seems to be to capture the excitement and fun of old time comedy capers starring such actors as Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn’s Charade. The problem is none of the fun exhibited in older films of that sort is present here, neither is the chemistry. Depp plays Frank as a boring everyman and Jolie’s looks are all that’s on display with an expression so vacant she could have been played by a cardboard cutout. I can’t tell if it’s the characters or the actors, but these two A-listers have absolutely no onscreen chemistry and to make matters worse, the action scenes are downright dull.
One scene features Frank leaping from rooftop-to-rooftop, a scene Henckel von Donnersmarck compares to the story of Casanova escaping from jealous husbands in the press notes. Too bad it plays at a snail’s pace leading to the chase’s inevitable conclusion. Equally slow and ponderous is a second “action” sequence as Frank is pulled through the watery streets of Venice. Apparently the scene was shot over seven nights on location, but you’d have a hard time convincing me some of those cuts weren’t Depp in a wave pool on a studio lot. Boring and uninventive is the best way to describe them and much of this film.
There is little left to the imagination with The Tourist and the script written by Henckel von Donnersmarck along with Christopher McQuarrie (Valkyrie) and the usually trustworthy Julian Fellowes (The Young Victoria) has none of the life you’d expect from this trio. Depp and Jolie seemed bored as did the rest of the cast and as an audience member I was able to relate.
