But maybe gorgeous stranger Elise Clifton-Ward (Angelina Jolie) is more than he is ready for. After meeting on a train, she whisks him away to her five-star hotel and treats him like prince, giving him hints at romance yet always managing to keep him at arm’s length while she does. It’s like she’s got ulterior motives, almost as if he is a pawn in some sort of game, and for the life of him all of this is starting to feel a bit like a plot from one of his spy novels.
He is more right than he knows. Soon he is the central figure in a game between Scotland Yard Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany), extremely wealthy, if highly vindictive, criminal mastermind Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff) and a ghostly enigma known as Alexander Pearce all of them are searching for. Elise has indeed used him, tricked them all into believing he is Pearce and that Alex is Frank.
The Tourist is a lark, a gigantic, lovingly photographed and highly romanticized puff piece that wants to play like a witty and whimsical variation on Hitchcock classics, most notably North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief. It is lighthearted and filled with moments of intense, beautiful fantasy, all it down up in an Old Hollywood kind of gloss giving it a Cary Grant/Grace Kelly shine that’s sometimes divine.
Too bad the movie itself isn’t any good. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others, number five on my list of the top 50 films of 2000 – 2001), and with a screenplay written by Christopher McQuarrie The Usual Suspects), Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) and von Donnersmarck, the film is a bizarre over-plotted failure that gets worse and worse the more you think about it. Filled with illogical twists and turns that don’t so much exist as I guess they tickle the collective funny bones of the hugely talented filmmakers behind them, the whole thing falls to pieces with a crashing thud, the final scenes so bizarrely horrible it’s almost hard to believe the trio has three Oscars between them.
On top of that, neither Depp nor Jolie has an ounce of chemistry. While both are beautiful to look at, the heat supposedly burning between them is negligible. It’s as if they’re in two different pictures, two different worlds even, both looking at one another with wistful eyes but getting nothing of substance in return. I never believed they were falling for one another, never bought what the script was selling, and if they’d chosen to go their separate ways and never see one another again and I’ve found that easier to digest than the inedible swill ultimately put forth by the filmmakers.
Which is a pity, because there is plenty to be impressed with, not the least of which is Jon Hutman’s (It’s Complicated) immaculate production design, John Seale’s (Cold Mountain) luscious cinematography and James Newton Howard’s (Love & Other Drugs) mischievous yet romantic score. Additionally, the opening half hour is quite wonderful, setting things up with a glossy yet confidently intelligent ease that I found entrancing. Frank and Elise’s first meeting is filled with witty touches, and for just a second there I was positive I was in for a playful bit of Hitchcockian fluff I was sure to adore.
Sadly, once the main meat and potatoes of the plot kicks in the fun ebbs away. While I did enjoy much of Depp’s performance, and while Jolie emanated a radiant beauty that jumped off the screen, neither generated a bright enough spark to make up for the script’s numerous shortcomings. The twists are silly, the turns nonsensical, and when all of them are finally added one to the other nothing works and even less makes a lick of logical sense. This is one of those motion pictures where you get the feeling the filmmakers are so pleased with their own slight of hand that they forgot to make sure if the pieces all fit together, the fact none of them do an obstacle too gigantic for von Donnersmarck and company to overcome.
I’m partial to a movie like this one. I wanted to give into its charms, to let it sweep me away in its old school Hollywood glossiness. It was a movie that made me recall my love for Cary Grant, my adoration for Grace Kelly, and how that in the pairing of one with the other miracles could be blissfully achieved. But that doesn’t happen, and for all my wishing and wanting otherwise von Donnersmarck’s opus never quite rises to the occasion, The Tourist a picturesque travelogue that unhappily goes nowhere of interest.
