Paul Bethany co-stars here as a Scotland yard investigator who’s hot on the trail of a man named Pearce who stole a lot of money. When we first meet Bethany’s character, we get a subtitle that tells us where he’s located, which is Scotland Yard, London. Fair enough, but just five minutes later, when Bethany is called into his superior’s office to account for the overrun in costs his investigation is causing, we get yet another subtitle, which reminds us once again that this is London. It was at that point that I realized that the filmmakers were treating the viewer as if he/she were a low-grade moron.
This was barely ten minutes into the film, and already I hated it.
But I still held out hope that The Tourist couldn't be all that bad. After all, it
stars Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, two of the biggest box office stars of their generation. Hell, it’s basically a team-up of Jack Sparrow and Lara Croft--so, if nothing else, it should be an entertaining and stylish action film, right? Wrong. Depp plays a normal guy tourist who gets caught up in the chases and overall exotic adventures of Jolie’s mystery woman, and yet oddly, there’s absolutely no chemistry between them whatsoever. I’ve seen better mixtures of oil and water than these two.
The Tourist tries very hard to recreate the dashing, romantic adventure film,
like To Catch a Thief, which starred Cary Grant and was directed by Alfred
Hitchcock. But The Tourist never has any real sense of danger, nor any suspense
whatsoever--thanks largely to the incredibly silly script, which goes for style
over substance and just winds up falling flat on its face. Depp and Jolie try to
make the most of this insipid affair, but their characters are so poorly written
that even their collective charm can’t save this stinker. There’s a major twist
at the end that’s just so ridiculous that you can’t help but wonder why everybody
even bothered going through this dopey charade in the first place.
Another really irritating aspect of the Tourist was the overbearing, stupidly
giddy music score that’s sounds like it was composed by a guy who never actually
saw the film. There are some darkly confrontational scenes where the music is so
bouncy and lively that it’s as out of sync as having a Judas Priest song playing
on an episode of the Teletubbies (although that might be more entertaining to
watch than this film was). But since the movie is such a snooze fest, maybe the
obnoxious music is meant to keep the viewer awake? If you’ve got the urge to see
Depp and Jolie, go rent the Pirates of the Caribbean and Lara Croft movies, instead.
--SF
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