It takes a special kind of talent to pair Hollywood darlings Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp together without generating anything remotely approaching chemistry. Yet The Lives Of Others director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes it look miraculously easy in this bland, meandering ‘thriller.’ The inverted commas around ‘thriller’ are necessary because it’s less exciting than picking dead skin off your feet – my method of staying awake for the film’s second half.
Jolie is British hoity-toity charisma-vacuum Elise, who’s being trailed across Europe by the cops in the hope that she’ll lead them to her criminal mastermind lover, who owes the government a few million quid – but instead, she sends them fishing for red herring Frank (Depp), an unassuming maths teacher from the States.
Throw in a separate gang of super-villains so deadly that none can hit a target with a Beretta from five yards away – who also end up chasing Frank because Elise is the only person in the world with any semblance of a clue – and the set-up is complete. Sounds nonsense on paper? Hey, on film, it’s even worse.
Memorable moments are numerous, but always for the wrong reasons. Jolie’s upper-class accent sounds like Keira Knightley one minute, Dannii Minogue the next, and her performance is unfalteringly androgynous – a total contrast to how the character is (clumsily) written. Depp fares a little better, although he does have the single funny line in the film, where hapless Frank calls Elise “ravenous” rather than captivating. Yes – that is the best bit.
The opening half-hour’s sweeping panoramas of Venice and the French countryside are easy on the eye. Still, even their beauty is undone by a preposterous rooftop chase in which Depp prances about in his pajamas, clearly filmed in front of a green screen. After that, the film starts throwing in twists for the sake of it, and the barely-there plot collapses completely before closing on the cheatiest ending you’ll see all year. It’s worth watching The Tourist and admires the audience-insulting cheek of its finish. But still: don’t.