The Tourist: Planes, trains and attempted murder

The ideal international romantic thriller should provide distractingly beautiful scenery (both human and geographic) and enough head-scratching moments that people leaving the cinema appear to have dandruff. In the best cases, said puzzlement should continue even after the final credits, possibly even after a second viewing. Think of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint inNorth by Northwest, or the underappreciated Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen.

The Tourist succeeds overwhelmingly on point No. 1. Co-stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp are in peak physical form, and when these strangers meet it is on a train travelling through the equally gorgeous French/Italian countryside, en route to Venice. You hardly know where to look first.

Jolie plays Elise Clifton-Ward, who has just received instructions from her mysterious lover to board a train out of Paris and befriend the first man who looks roughly like him. She settles on Frank Tupelo, a math teacher from Wisconsin whom she finds reading a fictional piece of fiction, The Berlin Vendetta. Their eyes lock, then throw away the key.

It’s a rare thrill to see Depp looking so plain. In six of his past seven starring roles he’s been bewigged, powdered or pirated. Here, his face adorned only by a close-cropped moustache-goatee and framed by a haircut borrowed from Lord Byron, we get to have a nice long look into his soulful brown eyes. Jolie’s eyes are very nice, too. Let your gaze travel up and you’ll find them.

Elise convinces Frank — not very difficult, it must be said — to invite her to dine with him on the train, then to spend a night in her hotel suite in Venice. In the evening, she kisses him. In the morning, armed Russians try to kill him. Frank seems to think this is almost a fair trade.

Director and co-writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (he made the magnificent 2006 Oscar-winner The Lives of Others, which could almost have been called The Berlin Vendetta) keeps a light hand on the tiller in this remake of the 2005 French film Anthony Zimmer. A rooftop foot chase is followed by another involving motorboats in the city’s canals, but the pace is often languorous, reminiscent of George Clooney’s turn as a tourist/assassin in The American.

In some ways, The Tourist plays almost like a parody of the genre. There’s the old escape-by-subway scene, where the doors close just as the cops are closing in; a lot of Interpol types talking into their sleeves; a heavy-duty wall safe; even a fancy ball where a crucial meeting takes place. And there’s a bad guy who calmly garrotes one of his henchmen while discussing his evil plans.

There’s also some fine comedy. Frank, who apparently speaks no Italian, keeps trying to converse in pidgin Spanish in an effort to make himself understood. When a policeman tells him that attempted murder is far less serious than actual murder, Frank agrees but argues that it’s quite a step up from room service, which is all he’d been expecting that morning.

The film is lovingly shot. Numerous aerial views of the city give it an almost travel-porn feel, while Jolie’s cream-coloured, tight-fitting dresses make her stand out in street scenes like a gazelle loping through a herd of buffalo.

Now the bad news. The film’s central mysteries — Who is Elise? Who is Frank? Who’s the mysterious Alexander Pearce whom Frank vaguely resembles? — seldom amount to more than a minor distraction. Jolie and Depp have their hands full trying to get away from the garrote-wielding Steven Berkoff and British agents Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton, and though they warm to each other, there never seems to be enough time for them to fall convincingly in love.

At the end of the film, the big reveal is quick and simple; too simple, in fact. You won’t necessarily see it coming, but neither will you need to give it a second thought, let alone a second viewing. The Tourist is thus aptly named, because while it presents some lovely sights, it doesn’t present itself as a professional example of the genre. It’s more of a dilettante, just passing through.

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