Go Somewhere Else- THE TOURIST Review

Writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnesmarck made his mark with 2007's The Lives of Others, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. That was an arresting thriller that utterly gripped me from start to finish and had me thinking about it for days afterwards. So fuck knows why he followed it up with a limp and forgettable beautiful people vehicle like The Tourist.

Our beautiful people are Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, and their characters become entwined in the midst of a stock romantic crime thriller plot. Jolie is Elise, the wife of a British tax fugitive who's wanted by both Scotland Yard and some pissed off gangsters. None of his pursuers know what he looks like after intelligence suggests he's had facial reconstruction surgery. To give them a false trail, Elise finds Frank, played by Depp, on a train to Venice, and pretends he is her wanted hubby.

I like both Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie as actors more than for being attractive and all. Now here they are, together at last, and it's a total damp squib. You could say they're there for the salary insofar as their utter lack of romantic chemistry. The pairing of these beautiful people from inception to the finished film results in something akin to a gossip mag reader pushing together a Barbie and a Ken, to the film being the mind-numbing footage of their anatomically incorrect plastic crotches clacking together.

Jolie can just about pull off the criminal bride, with all of her glamour and whatnot, but it doesn't mean that we give a monkey's about her character. Also, after all the times spent complaining that no one ever notices that Jolie is gorgeous when she acts as an undercover agent in Salt, or as a bereaved mother in Changeling, The Tourist finally has every character stop and stare as she walks by, and it's even more annoying. This is to say nothing of Depp, whose acting specialty is grotesques for a reason. He can play a normal person no more than Tracy Morgan could play Adolf Hitler, and Frank never registers as the schlubby school teacher he's supposed to be.

The plot itself is goofy as all hell. Read the synopsis above and I bet if you put your thinking cap on, you can puzzle out the twist ending. I credit you with that much intelligence, but the filmmakers evidently do not. If you can figure it out from the most spoiler-free synopsis, imagine the catatonic state of compliance you'd have to be in to be surprised when you watch the actual film. Serial ranter and occasional Mega-Me Mark Kermode has described it best, when he compared it to the ending of an episode of Scooby Doo.

It's a film that is eminently more concerned with depicting the troubles of beautiful people in beautiful places, being beautiful, than it is in nailing down its own tone or bothering to keep its audience engaged. By turns, it's supposed to be both a mistaken identity thriller in the vein of Hitchcock and a screwball romance. I would err towards the latter in making this film, because there's some genuinely funny stuff when Depp's clueless tourist runs around desperately asking for help in Spanish despite being in Italy, but its straight-faced lobs at sexiness have all the expression and character of a blow-up doll.

As the script stands, there might be a marginally more interesting film made from The Tourist if the leads weren't specifically supposed to be the Sexiest People in the World. Maybe if Johnny Depp was replaced by Roy Cropper or Barry off Eastenders, and Angelina Jolie deferred to Susan Boyle or Rula Lenska. Not to say that any of these people are either ugly or more attractive than Depp or Jolie, but they at least have character. The Tourist is a shallow, obvious and unsympathetic muddle that's beneath the talents of almost everyone involved, with an OK! Magazine formula of casting that utterly fails to spark any romance or warmth.

The Tourist is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Tourist, why not share your comments below? If you're a fan of Timothy Dalton and Paul Bettany, they're in this one too- props for the latter for having the acting chops to look genuninely surprised at that bloody obvious final twist.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Mutually Assured Distraction- SALT Review

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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At the end of an underpowered summer for action films, here comes Salt, a bid to launch a female-centric spy franchise. While the most that Bond and Bourne ever find themselves accused of is going rogue for some personal reason or other, their latest would-be counterpart, CIA operative Evelyn Salt, is really put through the wringer when a defector accuses her of being a Russian sleeper agent on her wedding anniversary. Salt then tries to contact her husband while on the run from her friends and employers, as the clock counts down towards an assassination attempt on a major world leader.

I can only assume that writer Kurt Wimmer started dancing with joy at the recent discovery of Anna Chapman's covert presence on American soil, because otherwise his latest, this film, might have looked rather silly in its attempt to resurrect Russians as the international boogeymen. Either that, or Chapman was part of Sony's advertising campaign, in a double bluff worthy of this very film's second act.

It becomes clear very quickly once you get into Salt that not all is as it seems. Given the stupidity of Wimmer's post-Equilibrium scripts, such as Law Abiding Citizen and Ultraviolet, it's nice to see him actually putting together a suspenseful and massively entertaining action script like this one. And crucially for a script that relies on twists and turns, it's not entirely predictable.

Alright, maybe it's a mite predictable, in one small but potentially fatal aspect, especially as the film relies so much on the central enigma of who can and can't be trusted. Without spoiling anything, you need to watch more films on a certain actor's filmography if you're not simply waiting for him to turn heel in this one. But by holding most of the cards close to his chest, director Phillip Noyce keeps his audience captive while still refusing to let up with the action.

It's well directed and very functional action too, something that the likes of The A-Team and The Expendables have failed to deliver this year. Maybe it has the same problem as its more masculine alternatives, in that Angelina Jolie is a bit indestructible, but every character remains an equal opportunities ass-kicker. And although it feels patronising to say it, this film is markedly better for having a female lead.

For those who don't know, Evelyn Salt was originally Edwin Salt, a male operative who was at one point going to be played by Tom Cruise. He turned it down in the end because it was far too close to his role in Mission: Impossible for his liking. The surface similarities to Ethan Hunt are obvious when you watch the film, but so is the fact that Cruise or Hugh Jackman or any of the other established male action stars wouldn't quite cut it.

It's different not just because Jolie is a woman in the lead role, but because she's a woman in an action film, a usually thankless role that's repurposed competently and without lingering on how the lead performer is one of the sexiest women in the world, instead of the regressive matinee idol who made Knight and Day instead. Plotwise, this isn't the high drama of Changeling, but it's lightyears beyond than Jolie's outings as Lara Croft.

Hell, there's even a decent explanation of why Russians are suddenly the bad guys again, beyond some manner of residual American paranoia about Mutually Assured Destruction. A sleeper agent of the kind that's postulated here, once planted, takes time to come to fruition. In other words, it does just enough to assure audience members like me that some thought went into this, so I was able to just sit back and enjoy some great action scenes and some great suspense without any utterly stupid political intrusions on the part of the filmmakers.

For the first half-hour, Salt never lets up, and it makes for some of the best portion of what you want from a summer blockbuster I've seen all year. It's not in the class of Inception or Toy Story 3 for action setpieces and pacing, but it easily outdoes its more macho counterparts, like The Expendables. Jolie gives a surprisingly earnest performance throughout, and I only wish Noyce and Wimmer hadn't scheduled the most obvious twist at the very end. But if their goal was to launch a new spy franchise, they've succeeded- I'd much rather see Salt 2 than the continuing adventures of Barney Ross and his grumpy old mates.

Salt is now showing at cinemas nationwide.
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If and when you see Salt, why not leave a comment on the film and/or my review? Aren't you glad I didn't pepper the review with puns about salt?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.