The Tourist

"You are the least down to Earth person I have ever met"

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (what a name!) exploded onto the world stage with his Oscar-winning historical-thriller The Lives of Others. It was a film that masterfully recreated a recent period of European history and explored a political landscape via the accumulation of details relating to surveillance in 1980s communist Germany. It was nailbiting, heartbreaking and incredibly evocative... everything that The Tourist is not. Von Donnersmarck should've been the perfect choice for handling a Euro-spy thriller starring talented big name actors such as Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, but for reasons unknown to me, something got lost in translation and The Tourist is a pale and underwhelming piece of cinema as a result.



The plot itself isn't anything groundbreaking... it's a Hitchcockian tale of an unsuspecting man drawn into a web of intrigue. This man is Frank (Johnny Depp), an awkward maths teacher on holiday in Europe. His path crosses with Elise (Angelina Jolie), a woman under surveillance who chooses Frank as a patsy to draw attention away fromm her erstwhile partner, Alexander Pearce. There are a few twists along the way, with both Scotland Yard (represented by Paul Bettany) and a European crime lord (Steven Berkoff) chasing after them.



I'll get the good stuff out of the way first... the casting is actually pretty good. Jolie is the epitomy of modern glamour and perfect for this sort of role (a beautiful British spy). Her accent is impeccable and her character is more about elegance and cunning than action. As for Depp, it's always refreshing to see him playing someone who isn't weird. The character's neuroses extend to a slight lack of self esteem, but even that plays into the gimmick that this is just a regular guy. The other cool part of this film is the cinematography and Venetian location-work; it looks really rich and dignified, like a European travel brochure (which fits with the film's title).



I think the main unavoidable problem with The Tourist stems from Frank's introductory scene where he's seen reading a spy novel and he and Elise talk about it. It sets up this postmodern tone that suggests the film will be all about subverting the genre's tropes, or that the film is at least fully aware of the spy genre's well-defined limitations. The problem with this is that if this is a world where people read spy fiction then it should logically follow that the spies featured should be realistic and anti-cliched by contrast. And yet the whole question on which the plot and character motivations hinge on is the assumption that Depp's widower maths teacher is really a superspy who's had a face change.



Also playing into this idea (but not really gelling with it) is the fact that The Tourist isn't a spy in the modern Bourne/Casino Royale sense... it's a lot more old school and parochial. The beautifully photographed European setting, the combined starpower of Jolie and Depp, the summoning of the playful spirit of Hitchcock, the lushly obvious and sometimes cheesy orchestral score - it all calls to mind the quirky, romanticised thrillers of the 1950s and 1960s (To Catch a Thief, Charade, Gambit)/ It's a throwback that stands out like a sore thumb against Quantum of Solace, Red and other modern espionage films. Jolie and Depp aren't your typical superhuman spy heroes... Jolie unceremonoisly disposes of an enemy by simply hitting him on the head a few times. There are no quick cuts, none of that superfast action nonsense or bullet-dodging. Actionwise, it's quite anemic. It's more about this 'real' character (Depp) being thrust into an unknowable situation. I think I could handle an older, traditionalist spy film that realies on realism to heighten it's suspense, but The Tourist seems confused about what kind of tone to go for. The postmodern winks to the audience (the mentions of pulp spy thrillers and their cliches) are counterproductive to this traditionalism, so it just comes off as watered down and flaccid.



There's a suggestion during the opening act that the film is interested in exploring themes of duality in people, but this subversion of black and white morality (like everything else in the film) doesn't really get developed much. The mid-film twist is underwhelming, and the big twist at the end is stupid and makes no sense (the happy ending provided by Timothy Dalton's Scotland Yard official is ridiculous as well). Maybe I'm analysing it all too much... the film was beset by several production issues relating to actors and directors dropping out at the last minute, so the fact that the final product is a little undercooked shouldn't really come as a surprise. If I had to sum this film I'd say that it feels like a parody without any jokes, and no one wants to see that.



DIRECTOR: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes. Based on the film Anthony Zimmer.

KEY ACTORS: Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Steven Berkoff, Timothy Dalton, Rufus Sewell



RELATED TEXTS:

- The 2005 French thriller Anthony Zimmer, of which The Tourist is a remake.

- Angelina Jolie is no stranger to spy films and the like, she's also appeared in Wanted, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Salt.

- As mentioned in the review, I found this film to be tonally similar to some of Hitchcock's middle-period stuff; To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, Notorious, etc.

- Von Donnersmarck's previous film, The Lives of Others.



AWARDS

Golden Globes - nominated for Best Film (Comedy/Musical), Best Actor - Comedy/Musical (Johnny Depp) and Best Actress - Comedy/Musical (Angelina Jolie).