The Tourist is a movie notable for many reasons. First, following Salt, it’s the next step of Angelina Jolie’s master plan to only star in films that have impenetrably generic titles – coming next, presumably, will be Painting a Horse or Adam’s Ribbs or may be SuperBrad. Second, this is the first time Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp are together in a film.
Nobody seems to know what The Tourist actually is. Is it a thriller? A comedy? A romance? This is a good indication of genre.
A train whizzing through Europe, Angelina Jolie is in full glamour puss mode. Judging by the surroundings and the look on Angelina’s face, The Tourist has got to be a thriller but then comes Johnny Depp in a train whizzing through Europe pulling a dopey comic facial expression so we have to think The Tourist is a comedy. But then here’s Angelina in a Venetian water taxi, and she has the same mysterious expression as before. So you feel that perhaps Johnny Depp was just throwing a bouncer. So this definitely has to be a thriller. But as you move on Johnny Depp is also still pulling the same funny face as before. God, I’m so confused.
Decor and technology in this scene proves that The Tourist is absolutely not a wartime romance at all. What’s more, Johnny Depp is still pulling a face like a cartoon cow. And he’s usually right with his instincts, so if he says it’s a comedy then it’s a comedy – a fact that will be backed up by a murder?
A murder involving Steven Berkoff, a fancy drawing room and a length of measuring tape? This wasn’t what I expected at all. It’s actually quite depressing. Johnny Depp couldn’t possibly react to something as profoundly upsetting as the deliberate loss of human life. Maybe playing Jack Sparrow four separate times has caused Johnny Depp’s face to be stuck permanently in the family-friendly dim-wattage. Maybe we should be lucky that he doesn’t literally dress up like a pirate and fistfight an octopus at any point.
Just want to conclude saying that I was unable to understand the plot nor the characters of the movie, hence will no be writing anything.