Review of The Tourist (2010) by Jonnyfendi — 10 Jan 2011

What did you do? When Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie finally met in one screen? You get in line for a ticket! Mysterious story, city of Venice and promising Director as well, everything looks just fine, what could go wrong? But what you are about to experience is no other than being a tourist and get misguided.

The movie based on Luc Besson and Sophie Marceau movie titled ANTHONY ZIMMER in 2004. An American tourist Frank is approached by a mysterious girl Elise in a train (who can deny beautiful girl like Angelina Jolie anyway, do you?) on journey to Venice, Italy.

In the beginning, Elise has hidden intention to use Frank as a decoy from the hunt of police and Russian mafia. Now everyone thinks Franks is her long-lost fugitive lover, an intelligent thief Alexander Pearce.

Actually, the basic material is very promising, with some twists and turns in development. But in the process, they could not get a precise romantic atmosphere done right. The interaction between the two is stiff and awkward.

Frankly says, there is no chemistry here. In spite of Johnny Depp is my No. 1 favorite Actor nowadays (I have all of his movies, all!) but unfortunately in thiz movie he looks too childish next to Jolie.

You can see there is still a little bit Capt. Jack Sparrow in Depp character. He looks charming, but most of the time he becomes so uncomfortably clumsy and lazy. On the other side, for me Jolie more looks like -a supermodel walking in her runaway catwalk.

Yes, with the smile like that, and her sharp eye gaze, beautifully elegant dresses, who can resist the whole eye candy package. But I have to say, it could be the most boring appearance of Angelina Jolie of all-time.

What she does here just keep smiling all the time, without doing exploration for her character. Jolie is doing what I called Robotic Performance. Too much smile, too much pride, and too much eyelashes.

A better performance comes from Paul Bettany as Inspector John. The other Supporting Casts are Timothy Dalton, Rufus Sewell and the memorable one, Reginald Shaw who is very convincing as Berkoff, Russian mobster boss.

The Director of thiz movie is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. I found myself more enjoying his latest creation, one of respectable German movies in 2006, THE LIVES OF OTHERS. It is supposed to be ravishing, but rather than that, it is happened to be ravenous.

In the end, if you came to the theater to see some good looking faces.