You decide to take a trip to a far off destination. Let’s say Venice, Italy. You meet a strange and exotic woman on the train from Paris and you immediately become attached to her. You say goodbye to her on the train and expect to never see her again, a chance encounter. When you step off the train, you are surprised to hear the mysterious woman calling your name to join her on her boat to the island and hotel. You think nothing of it and decide to go because there is something about this woman that you can’t put your finger on but you want to learn more. From there, all hell breaks loose with bullets flying at you, boat chases in the canal and getting arrested and sold to a Russian who you have never met before. And it all started with one woman. So sets the scene of Johnny Depp as The Tourist and Angelina Jolie as the mysterious woman whom Depp cannot get away from, even if he wanted to.
Depp stares as a math teacher from the states on vacation to Venice by himself. Jolie stares as a married woman who gets mysterious messages from her husband who is missing telling her where to go, when and what to do when she gets there. She gets a note to get on a train and head for Venice and pick up someone who looks like him. She scans the train, finds Depp and decides he looks like her husband. They talk and this is where the movie got interesting. Depp is very flustered when Jolie sits down across from him. He turns into a babbling idiot, not knowing how to act in the presence of a beautiful, exotic looking woman. This is out of character for Depp; he usually plays very confident characters to the point of cocky and if he isn’t, it usually in a comedy or a cartoon not a live action film. It was nice to see Depp step out of his normal frame work of characters and become a very cautious, nervous person. Jolie on the other hand has played this role before – the exotic woman. It is the normal role for her. That is until about halfway through the movie, the audience gets a look into her character and see that not all is what it seems. She put on a persona that says she is confident and will take anything from anyone but then she turns the emotions on and can’t hide them anymore. I love those actors that can play a character that goes through a plethora of emotions in one movie.
The combination of two very popular actors is something that has to be considered very carefully when deciding who should star in a movie. With Depp and Jolie, one would think that they are too big for this movie together and only one person should have been cast. But that is not the case. When the two of them are on screen with each other, their popularity falls away and they become just two actors in a movie together. Their popularity complements each other very well. Their chemistry is even better and that was another thing that surprised me in this movie – I wasn’t expecting them to have as much chemistry as they did because in most of the movies they work on, they are the ones providing the chemistry all on their own.
Besides the actors there were a couple of aspects of the movie that I enjoyed: the music and the writing. The music reminded me of a 1950’s noir film and made me think I was watching a remake of a movie from that era with Humphrey Bogart or someone like him. As for the writing, the writers made Depp so clumsy and oblivious it made every moment funny.
I only had one issue with the movie – it was fairly predictable. I wasn’t able to predict the ending but other people around me where who don’t watch movies as religiously as I do. But no matter if I could predict the ending or not, I will never go on a vacation to Europe by myself.
My rating: 4/5.
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