T || The Tourist || Review

Review by Ben Lee
August 06, 2011
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On paper, "The Tourist" looked like it had every chance of being a worthwhile and entertaining popcorn flick. Not only is it set in the beautiful city of Venice, but it also stars Hollywood icons Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie and has the director behind the Oscar-winning film "The Lives of Others", Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, at the helm. However, "The Tourist" is a disappointing affair with lacklustre set-pieces, weak writing, and - perhaps most detrimental to the film - no spark at all between Depp and Jolie.

In this remake of the 2006 French film "Anthony Zimmer", Jolie plays Elise, a woman who's being tailed by the local police and Scotland Yard as her former lover Alexander Pearce owes £744 million in taxes. Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany), directing the Scotland Yard hunt for Pearce, correctly believes that Elise is in contact with him, so Elise picks out a random American tourist, Frank (Depp), on a train to Venice to act as a decoy. For Frank, his holiday becomes quite eventful, especially when a ruthless gangster also looking for Pearce arrives in the city to pursue him.

Somewhere in between all of the trickery, danger, and action, Frank and Elise fall for each other. Depp and Jolie may be pretty to look at, but their characters' romance feels extremely unnatural partly due to the absence of anything resembling chemistry. Frank is a humble schoolteacher, while Elise spends much of the time acting rather cold and distant. Little is known about her. She's portrayed as a wealthy but enigmatic lady, rarely opening up. It's hard to understand why Frank is taken aback so easily by Elise or why Elise's heart softens for him. In film, it's not rare to see two opposite people starting a believable romance, but in this case, the leading actors show nothing to hint that there is anything genuine between them if you look past the vastly contrasting personalities.

To be fair, the awkward script is equally guilty of screwing up the romance. A wistful 'I love you' from an alone Frank is bluntly shoehorned in when he watches Elise leave in one scene, while late in the film, Frank forces her into a pointless ballroom dance despite urgent circumstances. The screenplay tries far too hard to create an affectionate bond between Frank and Elise, which in turn has an adverse effect on the rest of the movie. Suspending disbelief becomes that much more difficult when there are plenty of human moments that simply aren't believable.

Action scenes, too, are a letdown. Poor green screen editing and a lack of frenetic urgency contribute in creating rather vacant chase scenes. But in spite of its many flaws, "The Tourist" is still tolerable. For starters, it's fairly well-paced thanks to some reasonable editing. Scenes don't drag, and the movie lasting barely 100 minutes definitely works in its favour. Furthermore, while Timothy Dalton is great fun to watch in the three scenes that he's in as Bettany's boss, Bettany himself comfortably outshines the two A-list leads as the snarky British inspector and is the best part of the film.

von Donnersmarck has classified "The Tourist" as a 'romance thriller'. Unfortunately for him, the 'thriller' part is done incompetently - there's never the sense that Frank or Elise are in danger - and the 'romance' is probably the least satisfying aspect of the entire thing, if you ignore the downright terrible ending. The movie is hardly offensive for the most part, but it's mediocre at best.

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