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Film Review: The Tourist

Posted By Claire on December 29, 2010

Coffetteer Stars: 2/5

The Tourist is a stylish, sleek, enjoyable film which ultimately rings hollow. A remake of a French thriller called Anthony Zimmer, directed by Jerome Salle and starring Sophie Marceau and Yvan Attal, it stars Johnny Depp and Angelinie Jolie in a tale of an American tourist who gets caught up in intrigue while traveling in Europe.

First things first – Angeline Jolie and Johnny Depp both turn in brilliant performances. Depp plays slightly against type as a hesitant, mild-mannered math teacher, and shows his range by being entirely convincing – the charisma and confidence of virtually all his previous roles is nonexistent. Angelina Jolie doesn’t have much to do since she’s essentially playing herself, but she’s compelling as always.

The cinematography is stunning – the film is a visual feast, never over-done, but shot through with light and color and texture. There’s a crisp lucidity to the way it portrays Venice and various parts of Italy, and the lush sets – hotels, Paris cafes, Venetian houses and ballrooms, and of course, trains – are deftly utilized to create a world seemingly characterized by effortless, expansive luxury and comfort. Western films nowadays seldom dare to portray the lives of the truly elite (the most recent one which springs to mind is Woody Allen’s Matchpoint, which was satirical), but there’s something refreshing about the sheer , unabashed beauty of the world these characters move in.

Into this luminous background Angelina Jolie steps like woman to the manner born, fulfilling what seems to be one of the film’s primary functions – an homage to her beauty. I’ve never seen a film so entirely focused on a single woman, particularly her physical beauty, yet at least initially all this effort hardly seems wasted, since Jolie glows. She’s often spoken of an one of the most beautiful women in the world, and the film feels at times like a showcase for a beauty which has never quite been highlighted fully, particularly as Jolie tends to take action roles. As brilliant, mysterious Elise, her beauty hypnotizes all those around her (it’s occasionally difficult to separate her on-and-offscreen personas as the men around her throughout the film either fall for her or watch her tongue-tied), and her grace and dignity is thrown into relief by the sophisticated European backdrop in which she moves.

The film’s second function is as a romance. The trailer appeared to present the film as a thriller, with only hints at romance and Jolie’s character potentially evil. In reality, however, the action and intrigue is a large part of the film, but the heart of the film, to which the thriller part ultimately steps back and gives full stage, is the romance. (The disingenuous trailer appears to be a new tactic – Tom Cruise’s Knight and Day did the same thing, ramping up the action in trailer and then revealing itself as a film with romance at the core. Interestingly, Knight and Day did not do well at the box office either).

The film functions only thirdly as a thriller, and that is where it fails, because the plot is so slight that it almost disappears. The supporting characters are fascinating, played by a roster of brilliant actors, including Paul Bettany as Pierce’s archenemy, Timothy Dalton in a scene-stealing turn as a Chief Inspector, and Steven Berkoff as a mobster whom Pierce stole from, but each is under-utilized. Each character is briefly introduced and explicated and then disappears.

And while the romantic relationship may stand at the core of the film, all the plot and forward momentum is driven by the intrigue of the police and gangsters trying to catch a brilliant thief who may or may not reappear and who may or may not have had plastic surgery. This “intrigue” itself is paperthin and becomes predictable quickly - a few good twists are thrown in, but the final twist (clever, but hardly shocking), meant to bring the film to a climax, falls flat. It’s satisfying in the moment, but as soon as it’s over, we’re waiting for something else to happen, another twist, because there must be more – and instead the film ends. There is even a teasing moment where the policeman who is Pierce’s archenemy comes out on the balcony and we think there’s going to be another twist – yet nothing happens.

Then there was the dialogue, another painfully weak element in a film that has gone all out for flair and visuals rather than character and quality. The only decent dialogue was that given to Bettany’s police Inspector. Everything else, particularly that between Elise and Frank, is painted in brush-strokes so broad that it’s painful to watch. It’s downright jarring to watch these brilliant, nuanced actors deliver these lines. Two sophisticated, intelligent people sit across from each other at a top-notch restaurant, taking a quiet moment in the midst of sadness and danger – and they converse in the same childlike romantic cliches we’ve heard in hundreds of other films, conveying complex emotions as if they’re self-important twenty-somethings.

In scope and style, The Tourist wants to be another Casablanca or To Catch a Thief, stylishly combining romance and suspense. It possessed the necessary settings, atmosphere, and thespian talent, but lacks two essential components – plot and clever dialogue. The Tourist resembles nothing so much as a long, glossy, extended trailer, the bare bones of a proper film.