VOD Spotlight: Johnny Depp falls prey to Angelina Jolie's charms in "The Tourist"

By Karl J. Paloucek

It’s unflattering to think it, but some movies are conceived in the boardroom. Or at least, they could be. It’s easy to look at The Tourist with those eyes, on the surface. It’s an enticing formula: Take two of the most visually appealing stars working in film — Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie — and put them in a thriller in a sumptuous and exotic setting, like Venice, where they’re bound to fall in love. It’s the kind of thing that, on paper, should seem like an obvious hit. Except that it wasn’t. But what is it, really?

It’s a fairly simple premise, with a lot of twists and turns. The action starts in Paris. Jolie plays Elise, an exotic, mysterious woman whose beau, Alexander Pearce, is being sought both by agents of Interpol and by a British gangster from whom he’s stolen a tidy bundle of cash. On his instructions, Elise boards a train and finds someone of roughly the same look and build to be mistaken for Pearce. She picks unsuspecting math teacher Frank Tupelo (Depp), whose slight flirtation with Elise leads him to become the quarry in a potentially lethal game of cat and mouse.

The Tourist is a visually enticing adventure, no question. It’s a lot of fun to watch Depp play something closer to a schlub (although he naturally manages to look good doing so) opposite Jolie’s sultry femme fatale, especially as they race through the waterways and over the clay tile rooftops of Venice. Even as the dragnet of Interpol agents commanded by Inspector Acheson (Paul Bettany) tightens and the mob men close in, it’s the visual spectacle that often steals the show in this film.

While there are plenty of arresting stunts and a lot of eye candy, there are a few plausibility problems in the story that lend confusion, but probably not enough for the film’s target audience to find fault. What some might find more troubling is that in the scenes involving Frank and Elise, things weren’t steamier more often. In that respect, this is a pretty squeaky-clean film. Whether or not the folks up in the boardroom envisioned it that way is doubtful, but with A-listers of Depp’s and Jolie’s magnitude, it’s not always the filmmakers calling those shots.

In the final analysis, The Tourist delivers exactly what it promises — a chance to see two of Hollywood’s biggest, most attractive stars thrown together in a seductive thriller with plenty of tension, sexual and otherwise.

“The Tourist” is now showing on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.

________________