The Tourist

The Tourist – Staring Johnny Depp

                                        Angelina Jolie

                                        Paul Battany

                                        Timothy Dalton

Rating: 1 (out of 5)

While on the train to Venice, Frank (Johnny Depp) meets mysterious beauty Elise (Angelina Jolie) After spending hours talking, he thinks he’s met he’s perfect girl, not realizing she’s about to drag him into a nightmare international chase for a terrorist that looks exactly like him!

Put like this, you might say that this film sounds good. After all, it does have a very high profile cast, and a writer/director in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, a relatively unknown director in Hollywood, however has won both a BAFTA and an Oscar for his film ‘The lives of others’, which was his latest film before ‘The Tourist’. But, unfortunately no, this film isn’t as good as it should have been at all!

It starts of slow, with the audience not knowing what is going on. This isn’t a bad thing, and all throughout the film, I was waiting the pace to pick up, but it never did at all.

A film like this, one with very little action in, will always rely on the actors to draw the audiences attention into the story, a lot like romantics do. ‘Ps. I love you’ and ‘’The Notebook’ are two films that come to mind. They get the audience emotional; help them connect to the characters and/or storyline. For ‘The Tourist’ to work this is something that the characters had to do and they simply never, which made the film dull and uninspired.

Throughout the whole of the film, the relationship between the two characters Jolie and Depp play is constantly very dull, and as a result of this made watching it very awkward, and I constantly kept asking myself the question, what is the point in this film?

All, or at least most directors have something in mind that they want to get out of the audience while they are watching the film. The best example that anyone would know about is when Jack, played by Leonardo Dicaprio in the infamous ‘Titanic’, dies. James Cameron will have wanted to get an emotion response from the audience watching, leading them to maybe shed a tear or two. Michael Bay, known for his mesmerizing action sequences in films such as Transformers and Bad Boys, will want to get a shocked and amazement reaction out of his audiences when watching sequences such as Optimus Prime and Megatron fight it out to the death. Again I use films such as Romantic and Action, because I get the distinct feeling that is what Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is trying to portray in this unimaginative piece of film.

If you haven’t seen this film, here is a glimpse of the sort of action packed nonsense you are missing out on. 2 men come to kill Johnny Depp, so he starts to run upon the rooftops of Venice, or more just walk really fast, while Jolie looks on from below, ‘worried’, if you could use that word, and finally he gets away by jumping into a fruit stand in the local market, like that has never been done before.

Aside from all of the insufferable boring scenes, what makes it so much worse is the music. Throughout the film, there is this constant piano playing very slow and droll, which only seems to make the film go even slower then it is shot.

Looking back at this film, I would have to say that this is probably the worst film that Depp and Jolie have done in their careers. The fact that it was nominated for 3 Golden Globes for best motion picture, best actress and best actor in a musical or comedy is mind blowing seen as ‘The Tourist’ portrays no sign of it been either a musical or a comedy!

I would certainly suggest staying away from this film all together as it is a waste of 2 hours of your life that you’re not going to get back, if your in the mood for a film which stars Depp or Jolie, then maybe go to Pirates of the Caribbean or Mr., and Mrs. Smith, both of which have better acting and the films actually live up to their reputation.