The Tourist

This came out around December of last year, I guess, and while on the surface I thought it would be good (a spy movie with some famous actors set in Europe), some reviews came out quite critical of the movie. I passed on this one, not going to my local theater. My parents recently checked this out via Netflix. My dad reported it was good, "really good," but my mother was the most enthusiastic. "10 stars, John, it's a really good movie!!" Okay. It does get high marks on beautiful scenery and good looking actors; Jolie spends the first part of the movie sauntering around Paris, in a very nice dress. The part that made me giggle was how she was moving her hips; it was extremely overdone. She's a mysterious woman, and as usual, there's not much acting on her part; she's all lips and expressionless. She receives a note to encounter a man that looks like another man, presumably her boyfriend or husband, on a train. She finds Johnny Depp, reading a spy novel. He's supposed to be a math teacher tourist from Wisconsin. Something about this doesn't fit. He doesn't look like a math teacher, and he's not playing the naive American cliché of a tourist. As one reviewer said, there's no chemistry between the two as actors. She plays mysterious and leads him to a hotel in Venice. He never asks why he's staying with her; this is just an odd story. Adventure ensues when the mafia is after him, and she tries to save/rescue him. Absolutely stunning views of Venice, from the street level, and from above in a helicopter. Eye candy. But the story is weak, and the adventure is on low-octane, really. Boat chases that go grandma speed (they had to go slow to accommodate Venetian law). The ending has a twist, for sure, which was shocking enough to let me give it "one more star" in my head, but ultimately, I think a lot of money was wasted here. Depp and Company (Pierce Brosnan!) are capable of much more acting, they were robbed here of an opportunity to do better or any more.The Wikipedia) suggests they rushed the film, after a quick re-write by the director. It shows. There's a reason the voters on Rotten Tomatoes gave it 20%. It's the comical elements of the movie that really kind of spoiled it for me, plus we never get the sense that Depp's character is really scared, and we never get the sense that she's ever going to even sweat, being chased by mobsters with guns.