The Tourist:Review
The Tourist has had many bad reviews and so far I am almost failing to see why. Whilst it is not the best work of either star (Angeline Jolie and Johnny Depp) it is a light-hearted chase film about a con man on the run. It is in the same bracket as Mr & Mrs Smith, and whilst that means Jolie is hardly taking a step down I think the shock for most was that Johnny Depp was not playing the lovable clown nor the absolute heartthrob, but the bumbling idiot turn cunning mastermind and this throws you a tad.
Paul Bettnay co-stars as a British Inspector hell bent on finding this con-man Alexander Pierce who is wanted for stealing lots of money from an important gangster and not paying his tax to Britain. Pearce is the same man Elise (Jolie) is trying to rendezvous with but can’t as he would be seen and caught. So he sends word to her to find a man his height and build and use him as a decoy, making the police interested in this man instead and thus throwing them off the scent. So she picks Frank (Johnny Depp), a math teacher from Wisconsin. He gets caught up in her high budget, fast paced life and so the movie continues.
Whilst, predictably, Frank falls for the undeniably stunning Elise, he has an agenda of his own and so an unexpected plot twist surprises at the end. Whilst the journey of the film is hardly and Odyssey it is a jog in the park with a few trips and stumbles along the way.
To me it seems nice for Depp to be playing an unexpected part, and though not his best work, it is still something to keep fans on their toes and really stops him from ever being typecast; one of things that makes him great. Jolie on the other hand seems to be very ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’, and comes across quite manipulative and cold at times, however by the end she becomes humble and all is forgiven in the name of love. I think this should be put down to an all round nice way to spend a quiet weekend, however it surely isn’t the action flick it was hyped up to be, maybe it was exaggerated due to the cast but that ultimately still doesn’t make this a bad film at all.
