Film Review: 'The Tourist'

It’s a shame when you know that a horrible film is destined to be a huge box office success. If my hunch is correct, “The Tourist” will rake it in for the next few weeks. Hey, I wanted to see Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie go at it on screen, but what a monumental let down. It’s as if the two actors had never done anything of significance prior to having made this tedious movie.

Bad acting is just the beginning. The story is so preposterous, a third-grader could have written it: Elusive mystery man (Depp) steals money from a bad guy but wants to hook up with his girlfriend (Jolie). Spoiler alert! So, he has plastic surgery in order to avoid recognition. Of course, a gaggle of cops, gangsters and Interpol are in hot pursuit of the mystery man, but, frankly, the pursuing is anything but hot. It’s yawn-inducing.

As for the script, the dialogue is just plain lame. Examples go something like this: “I wish we’d met in another life.” Please. Another involves the two main characters meeting on a train. She starts, “My name is Elise. What’s yours? Frank. That’s an awful name. It’s the only one I’ve got.” Bad on its own, but Sinatra immediately came to mind (I don’t think that the “chairman of the board” would have appreciated the remark).

The most depressing aspect of this bore fest is that the Oscar-winning director of “The Secret Lives of Others,” Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, was behind the camera. And, getting back to that awful script, Oscar winner for “The Usual Suspects,” Christopher McQuarrie, is responsible. What’s up here?
When you look back at Angelina Jolie’s magnificent work in films such as “The Changeling” and “A Mighty Heart,” one wonders what she is doing in “The Tourist.” And Johnny Depp ... I was actually cringing when he spoke most of his lines. What was the creative genius behind “Edward Scissorhands” and “Donnie Brasco” thinking when he took on this perverse project?

My take is that all of these guys got caught up in attempting to make a “Charade” or “North By Northwest” genre of film. But they got so tangled in their egos that they blew it — big time.