12/11/10 - The Tourist

The Tourist (2010, 103 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1243957/

I begin the 200s with The Tourist. The film wasn't getting great reviews but I'm a big fan of Depp and Jolie looked pretty stunning the previews so I was game for it. I wasn't expecting much except maybe a standard popcorn thriller.

The film follows Elise Clifton-Ward (Angelina Jolie) as she is contacted by her criminal ex-boyfriend Alexander Pierce while using American tourist Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) as a decoy to the police. The plot eventually gets much more complicated than this and also features smaller roles for Paul Bettany as Inspector John Acheson and Timothy Dalton as Chief Inspector Jones.

I saw North by Northwest not that long ago and that is what I was reminded of while viewing this. Well, that is, except North by Northwest was amazing and this simply wasn't. The biggest flaw in my opinion is the plot. I think had this chosen to be a standard popcorn thriller like I was hoping than it would have been good. Instead, it tried to be much deeper than that. Ward was an undercover agent who had fallen in love with Pierce but had prevented the English police from getting a good photo of his face; Tupelo ended up being Pierce (after heavy plastic surgery) all along and being the mastermind of everything; and Acheson was basically allowed to take over the role of bumbling police idiot. All of these characters clash both from a plot perspective and from a genre perspective. First, the plot is just too complicated. This isn't some grand chase or some epic mystery - it's simply a espionage thriller that's supposed to entertain me for just under two hours. Instead, The Tourist left me feeling like it wanted to be a movie that was remembered for something more than it was. I mean, The Usual Suspects is basically my primary example for a movie with a big twist at the ending. I'm not a big fan of this type of twist (usually) but that movie was so good for other reasons that I still gave the film a pretty good rating. Here, The Tourist employs the type of twist I enjoy more (one that you can piece together from paying attention) but there's just a general sense of apathy I received while watching the movie. Did I really care who Ward was really working for? Or what Frank was always doing running around and interfering? Or what exactly Acheson was even doing at any given time? Not really and I think that falls back on an uninteresting plot that was torn all over the place over what it wanted to be.

One small complaint I have lies with Angelina Jolie. She's done up with about four hundred pounds of makeup in this movie and, to be bluntly, she hardly looks real. Audrey Hepburn will probably forever stand as the most beautiful woman to ever be in movies in my opinion. Jolie is without a doubt the most beautiful A-list actress right now. However, here her features are exaggerated with the makeup and she's generally just done up too much. Hepburn had a classy charm about her coupled with this believability factor that this woman actually does exist. Jolie loses that in The Tourist. Jolie to begin with is a woman I would probably stop and stare at if I ever passed within fifty feet of her but when she's wearing luxurious gowns and caked on makeup she almost approaches clown status. She basically just doesn't even look real here and frequently it took me out of the movie. I said Elizabeth Banks did a great job in The Next Three Days by going with the believable and haggard look as she was in jail and I think Jolie takes the opposite approach here (and takes it to the extreme) and it ends up hurting the movie.

I really don't know what else to comment on when it comes to The Tourist. I felt like The Tourist was a movie I saw and then didn't take anything away from. I'll remember it as "that movie with Depp and Jolie" and that's probably it. Well, I'll also probably think of it as "that movie that Jolie wore too much makeup in" but that's not as important. I felt somewhat empty after the movie was over. It's not like I was glad it was over - it was enjoyable enough for most of the movie, but I just didn't really care about anything that was happening on screen.

Overall, I gave this film a 4/10. The Tourist has above average acting from two big name stars. And the plot tries to be interesting but unfortunately fails for me. The Tourist suffers from not knowing what type of movie it wants to be and it hurts it greatly as the end result is overall lacking.