Jolie and Depp Upstaged by Paris and Venice in the Tourist

There was a lot of buzz about Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp finally working together, after all they are both A-list actors that are the objects of millions of fan crushes. There were hopes of Mr. and Mrs. Smith all over again. But the chemistry in The Tourist wasn't there.

The Tourist is actually a remake of the 2005 French film Anthony Zimmer, with name and other changes made in order to make the film more Hollywood friendly. Having never seen Anthony Zimmer, I can't really compare the two films, but I was somewhat disappointed in character development. My favorite roles for both actors are ones where they and visibly struggling with their own inner darkness. For Jolie this includes her roles in Girl, Interuptted and The Changeling, for Depp What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and Sweeny Todd come to mind.

Jolie's character, Elise, came off as more full of herself than Jolie herself getting photographed on The Red Carpet. As she has breakfast, all the men in the movie turn their heads as if they are in a shampoo commercial, and I've seen shampoo commercials where "good hair girl" has more character than Elise.

While having her breakfast, Ellise gets a note from Alexander Pearce who is wanted for embezzlement by both the police and by the man he stole from, Reginald Shaw, a man infamous for killing anyone who upsets him or gets in his way. The note instructs Elise to get on a train and pick up a guy with the same height and build as Pearce in order to throw the police and Shaw's stooges off track. She burns the note, and police swoop in to rescue the ashes, and are able to enhance the rubble enough with a chemical plus computer combo to be able to make our parts of the letter. The ashes are displayed on the computer monitor showing the individual letters of the note, which the police begin to assemble like a jigsaw puzzle.

Finally, after 20 minutes or so of watching Jolie strut around in her "look how beautiful I am" way, we get to meet Depp's character, Frank, who is minding his own business, reading a spy novel and smoking an electric cigarette. She sits and begins to educate him in the finer points of what women want as if her opinion is the universally accepted one among all women everywhere. Frank bumbles through, and manages to follow Elise around like a lost puppy. While police initially believe he is Pearce, they soon discover he's a lowly American and Community College Math Professor, as opposed to Pearce, the suave and swindling Brittish banker.( Personally, I'd take a math professor over a swindling banker any day, but that's just me.) They back off, but Shaw's thugs are still trying to kill him.

One scene, where Frank is escaping thugs and is running across the roof of his Venice hotel in his bare feet and and jammies gave me a serious case of Jack Sparrow deja vu. The action scenes overall come across as more comical than intense, which lets the veiwers relax a bit and enjoy the beautiful backdrops of Paris and Venice as we try not to take things too seriously.

To her credit, Elise does soften a bit as the movie progresses as she broods a bit to Frank's ear about what she does and doesn't like about her relationship with Pearce. She begins to act in a way that shows actually concern and responsibility for her part in Frank's situation. The chemistry is lacking somewhat, I will admit, but perhaps not as much as the character development and directing. Given the right script and direction that plays on both actors somewhat quirky nature this might improve.

The revelations the characters make seem mostly introsprective. It's hard to convey much chemistry with someone when you are mostly focused on yourself. But ultimately the film has themes that ask us to explore our relationships and how weget to know one another and ourselves. But despite the beautiful scenery, I question if a movie is really the best place to do this or if this really needs to be a novel to explore these things properly. In the end I did enjoy the movie as the short break from reality. It's really not much more than that, but for that it's worth seeing.