The Tourist

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Tourist has the look and feel of a smart espionage thriller, but the tone is completely off. Instead of being clever, it's increasingly goofy. Instead of being thrilling, it's leisurely, plodding, and sometimes boring. Worst of all, instead of being sexy and naughty, it's chillingly cold with two highly paid actors who seem to have no idea how to create sparks when they're on the screen together.

Those actors are Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Both are fine on their own, but maybe bringing them together into the same project was a mistake. There's no chemistry between them, no sense that they truly want to be together up there on the screen. Neither of their hearts are in their roles, and it shows. They seem to be treating this movie as an extended vacation. Seems like everyone else involved in this film had the same idea. There are some beautiful locales in The Tourist, as the movie is set mainly in Venice, Italy, with some opening scenes in Paris and London. This makes for some stunning locations to look at, but the plot that has us visiting these locations is a mess. It's labored, it's silly, and it doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a sexy thrill ride, or a comic spoof of Hitchcock thrillers. It tries to have it both ways, and just ends up being tedious.

And yet, like I said, all the elements are up their on the screen for a successful movie. Someone just forgot to put gas in the tank, so the movie constantly sputters and stalls. The opening moments offer a lot of promise and intrigue. A woman of intrigue and mystery named Elise (Jolie) is under surveillance by Scotland Yard for her connection to a mysterious thief named Alexander Pearce, who supposedly stole millions of dollars from a local gangster named Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff). When we meet Reginald later on, he looks and acts more like a James Bond villain than a gangster. But, maybe that's because Berkoff actually was a Bond villain once. Paul Bettany plays the head agent who's following Elise. He's good at his job. He has equipment that can decipher and piece together a letter that's been burned beyond recognition that apparently holds Elise's current orders from Alexander Pearce.

Bettany's character, John Acheson, learns from the patched-together letter that Elise is headed for a train bound for Venice. Her job is to find someone on the train who resembles Alexander in height and build, and convince the police pursuing them that it's him. Apparently, Alexander has had drastic plastic surgery lately to avoid his many enemies, so he could look like anyone. The man on the train that Elise chooses to drag into the situation and pose as the mysterious Pearce is Frank Tupelo (Depp), the "tourist" of the title. He's a math teacher from Wisconsin with a passion for spy novels. Elise points out that their meeting on the train could be like something out of one of the books he reads. This is as clever as the screenplay gets. We expect some witty word-play to come between the two stars. Maybe some sexy banter, something that gets us excited. But it never comes, and the performances from Depp and Jolie do little to grab our attention. They're both oddly uncharismatic here.

Still, Frank becomes enraptured by the mysterious beauty, and ends up following her. Just as she plans, Frank is mistaken for Alexander Pearce, and soon he is being chased down by incompetent cops, and even more incompetent Russian mobsters. The tone is all over the place by this point. We get some gunfights and boat chases, and then we get some intentionally comical chase sequences, such as when Frank finds himself on the run from some mobsters while still wearing his pajamas, and he leaps and stumbles awkwardly across rooftops. I never quite found myself interested in where the plot was going, but I was very interested in wondering what kind of a movie the filmmakers were trying to make. Is it a tribute to old fashioned espionage thrillers? Is it a parody? Is it trying to play smart, or would it rather play dumb? The movie can't quite make up its mind.

But I think the big problem lies with the main characters, and it's not just the fact that Jolie and Depp have zero chemistry. We seriously cannot see why these two would be attracted to each other. Okay, maybe it's not hard to see a physical attraction in Jolie, but what is she supposed to see in Depp's character? He's a scruffy, bumbling doofus who doesn't even seem to know that he's in Italy. Why else would he keep on trying to speak Spanish to the various Italians he meets? It's supposed to be a running gag, but it just makes the character come across as an idiot, and hard to root for. We don't buy the connection between the characters for a second, and it doesn't help matters that the actors playing them can't seem to create the slightest bit of romantic energy or tension.

The Tourist ends up coming across as an odd little misfire. A very well shot, and sometimes beautiful to look at odd little misfire. There's nothing behind the good looks, though. The characters are forgettable, the plot is a wash, and there's just not a whole lot to care about. And when you think about it, how hard is it to have a nice looking movie when you shoot in Venice? For all of its big name stars, beautiful locations, and December release date, there's just a real lack of effort on display.

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