Film Review | The Tourist

I know that writing this review will be a pointless exercise. And no, this isn’t self-pity talking. Anybody who has glanced at the poster for The Tourist will have decided to see it or not based, solely, on the pull of the two stars: Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, arguably two of the most beautiful people on the planet.

And I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that most of us would rather spend two hours in their company – whatever it is they’re doing – than not. Leave it up to the unfortunate curmudgeons like me to agonise over what exactly happens in those two hours. You just sit back and enjoy the ride… or, rather, the leisurely cruise across sumptuous Venetian locales.

The journey will be punctuated by bullets, bad accents and casual plot holes… but you know all that comes with the territory.
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others) – who sounds like he would fit the film’s Bond-lite vibe to a T – The Tourist is a remake of a Sophie Marceu-starring French release from 2005.

It introduces us to Elise Clifton-Ward (Jolie) – and very soon into running time, her generous backside too –  who is instructed by her international fugitive boyfriend Alexander Pearce to travel to Venice and seduce a man who resembles him, in the hopes of convincing Scotland Yard – run by Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany) and hot on her trail – that they have their man, and pin everything on the unsuspecting dupe.

While on the train, she picks Frank Tupelo (Depp) – an American tourist travelling alone – who appears to make her mission very easy for her. But as the Russian mafia with whom Alexander has a chequered past barge in, Elise’s conscience is pricked, as are stirrings of true love.

The fact that this is another Hollywood plunder of an all-too-recent European production would be enough to put everyone off by now (I should think, I should hope), given the dismal failure – welcome in many respects – of Let Me In. So the gloss of Jolie-Depp (Deppgelina?) is not just a pretty add-on but very necessary to get us through the whole thing. It’s interesting in the fact that it finally lets the two stars bask in a vintage Hollywood charm that, one intuitively feels, they have always had… despite the fact that both spent a good part of their careers playing inspired weirdos and, latterly in Jolie’s case, Oscar-baiting heroine-victims.

Jolie takes to the role with effortless relish, despite the fact that her British accent fails to convince (though it doesn’t even approach the nails-on-chalkboard awfulness of her Eastern-European attempt in Alexander, thankfully). It is Depp who unfortunately falls short – he is overqualified in the charisma department to play an ‘everyman’ convincingly, though you can just picture Clooney nailing it, if only you wouldn’t be tired by the vintage-rouge schtick by now.

The Tourist – much like the eponymous protagonist – talks a good game, but ultimately fails to deliver on any but the most cosmetic of thrills. A case in point is the script’s vintage aspirations: there’s a sprinkling of inspired lines, and teasing hints at repartee… but beyond the sumptuous locales and superlative costuming, there’s not much to grip you. Tacking on Steven Berkoff, that renaissance man of actors, to play the half-Russian uber-villain is just the final straw of lazy (but expensive) decisions that the film didn’t need.

But who am I kidding – the above photo was probably incentive enough to book your cinema tickets already.