The man who knew too little

What could have drawn A-list actors Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp to star together in The Tourist, a wanna-be Hitchcockian thriller set in Venice? For Angelina, perhaps, the allure of a vacation with her family while filming in Italy. For Depp, who knows? Maybe the chance to play an average guy for a change.

It’s not the first time Depp has played a hapless dupe (think back to films like Nick of Time, Blow, Secret Window — if you can), but in The Tourist the chameleon-like American plays, well, a chameleon-like American. It’s a role that seems oddly confining and tailor-fit at the same time.

Depp is Frank Tupelo, a math teacher from Wisconsin. Says so right on his US passport. He’s traveling via train to Venice, where he is spotted by stunning stranger Elise Ward (Angelina Jolie), on the run from Interpol.

Elise seduces the dickens out of Tupelo, inviting him to her palatial hotel suite in Venice. Frank, thinking he’s gotten very lucky indeed, accepts, but ends up sleeping on the couch. Next thing you know, he’s being chased by Russian baddies with automatic weapons and clambering over Venetian roof tiles in his pajamas.

The Tourist got a lukewarm response from critics and at the box office, but it’s kind of amusing and entertaining. Diverting, even. Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is no Alfred Hitchcock (he’s not even a poor man’s Roman Polanski) but he remakes a 2005 French film called Anthony Zimmer in a passable, workmanlike manner.

Who you calling a pigeon?: Johnny Depp is symbolically lost among the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square, Venice.

The eyebrow raiser is the casting: two notable Hollywood icons, frontrunners on countless “Sexiest” lists for years running. And yet, Depp plays against type, looking bloated, puffy (he actually puffs on an e-cig throughout the movie, which in itself looks ludicrous). Jolie can’t escape looking like she’s treading down a red carpet every minute, with a cat-that-got-the-cream look on her face. Her toshy British accent is about as believable as, well, Johnny Depp’s British accent. There is the difficulty, in these media-saturated times, of forgetting for even a second that Angelina Jolie is playing an actual character; you just think, yo, Angie, nice gown. Whereas Depp is bloated, Jolie seems anorexic thin, her waist apparently bound by a corset. She could stand to eat a few more cannolis.

But when you strip away the modern touches, this is essentially a remake of To Catch A Thief crossed with North By Northwest. Just not a superior remake. Those two ‘50s Hitchcock films benefited from exotic locales, whether it was lush Monaco in the former or Cary Grant and Eva Saint Marie dangling from Mount Rushmore in the latter. Here, Venice is given loving treatment: the canals are stunning, the vaporettos glide by everywhere, St. Marks Square miraculously flood-free and just how we remember it. Venice is not depicted as a powerful character in itself, as it was so eerily in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers. But it’s still Venice.

As in North By Northwest, the strangers meet on a train. And just like Eva Saint Marie, Jolie is not who she seems. And just like Grant, Depp is dragged into a case of mistaken identity kicking and screaming. But the script wasn’t written by the incomparable Ernest Lehman, so the comparison ends there.

As with every couple-on-the-run movie, there are at least two nasty adversaries to contend with. On the one hand, you have Stephen Berkoff as Shaw, a Russian gangster with a distracting facial mole, out to hunt down Ward’s beau, a certain Alexander Pearce, for stealing his money. On the other side of the fence you have Paul Bettany as British Anti-Fraud Agent John Acheson, who’s after Pearce and the tax revenue from said stolen money. Both are appropriately vicious and one-dimensional.

Critics have slammed The Tourist for the lack of chemistry between its vaunted stars. True, instead of sparks flying there’s a certain archness between them whenever Depp and Jolie are in a room together, as though you expect someone to make some witty remark worthy of Cary Grant or Grace Kelly. They usually don’t. Jolie mostly smirks, while Depp looks puzzled. Though constantly worried, Depp seems more easygoing, an American schlump who is ostensibly out of his depth with the sophisticated and lethal Jolie. He gets the most laughs, sputtering out Spanish in Venice instead of Italian, much to the amusement and irritation of the polizia. In fact, he is tasked with carrying much of the film’s conceit, its humor and empathy. Though we’re not used to seeing Depp looking like he stepped out of the shower without using hair conditioner, he actually embodies the kind of hapless tourist that he is supposed to be playing. He stumbles and bumbles like a puppy dog, he’s awkward and clumsy, and occasionally we root for him, as misguided as his cause seems to be. Jolie’s task is harder: trying to convince us she has a heart under that icy exterior.

Online, you will see outtakes from the filming of The Tourist. Depp and Jolie are sharing genuine smiles; they obviously enjoyed themselves while filming the movie. Pity. It would have been nice if more of that joy had seeped onto the big screen. And yet The Tourist is all we have to look at this cinema season. The Metro Manila Film Festival is over, and this Hollywood juggernaut is what’s on offer. The best thing to do is to watch with no expectations, enjoy the little tidbits of humor, and remember that you are seeing two bona fide Hollywood Sex Icons onscreen together. It’s Depp! It’s Jolie! It’s Venice! Otherwise, remind yourself it’s other that, or watch Gulliver’s Travels (It’s Jack Black! It’s Gulliver! It’s 3D!). Your choice.