Here is something Hollywood has yet to learn: stars do not make movies. They can help sell a movie and good performances can add to the overall greatness of a movie, but in the end there must be a lot more creativity and imagination in a movie outside of the star power. Creativity and imagination are quite lacking in this action/comedy starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, two of the biggest stars around. The plot initially involves Jolie tricking the police into thinking a random tourist, Depp of course, is her outlaw husband. They don’t buy it, but some bad Russian guys who are owed some cash do, so they try to kill him and stuff. Boy, our tourist is in some pickle, huh?
From that point on, things get pretty average. If you’ve seen one blockbuster action thriller with mild comedic elements and a romantic subplot starring two relatively likable but mostly wasted talents movie, you’ve seen them all. Nothing that happens during this film will be the least bit unexpected to any intelligent viewer, with the only exception being the ending, which frankly doesn't fit. In fact, for all the action and glamorous locales, it’s all pretty bland. The movie meanders along with nowhere really to go, then, 20 minutes before it’s through, it switches to high gear and races past its climax. A movie that wants to draw the audience in and have feelings for the people involved should at least have a satisfying close, which this does not. The characters are also very flat personalities and are saying things that are standard screenplay and occasionally very eye-roll worthy. The idea that Jolie would fall so in love with Depp after only a few hours of acquaintance, enough to throw away everything she’s worked and lived for up to that point, just plain doesn’t make sense, yet we’re expected to blindly follow.
German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmark has done well for himself in the past writing and directing The Lives of Others, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but here, in his first English-language picture, he falters. There just isn’t a clear path that this movie takes. It looks very pretty and is well shot and edited, but when it’s all over, it’s easy to say, “Yeah, ok. But, so what?” So with such a misguided story and screenplay, success for The Tourist must ultimately fall on the shoulders of its stars. Both Depp and Jolie are excellent actors who have given competent performances elsewhere. Here they sway as much as the rest of the movie. Neither is ever convincing in their roles, with Jolie flip-flopping personalities at various moments and Depp confusing his accents and mumbling a lot. I would not be surprised if they knew what they had gotten themselves into and only gave the minimum. That or they tried their best and had nothing to latch onto, which is more likely. Although, I think the rest of the crew really thought they were making something special. You can feel the attempts to entertain and produce iconic cinema leaking through the screen, but I don’t think anything truly great could have been done with this story no matter who was attached to it.
I must admit that there is another side to the coin. I was frequently reminded while watching of The Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. That was a movie that had two charismatic stars stuck in a plot so thin that it had to be covered up with a large amount of stylish filler. That movie was saved because the style was so unique and marvelously entertaining, and it is a movie I praise and enjoy. There really is no technical difference between that movie and The Tourist. In fact, they are extremely similar. I can very well see many a person watching The Tourist, which does have a certain elegant style to it, and finding it similarly enjoyable; a modern version of what I enjoyed in Thomas Crown. So, in a way, The Tourist is excusable as passive entertainment, because despite its many faults, there is still enough of a movie buried in there to please audiences today. Though I still would not recommend this as a good movie, it may be just what some couple is looking for on a lazy weekend afternoon.
5/10
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