On the Couch

DVD REVIEW

The Tourist ***
Directed by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Starring: Johnny Depp; Angelina Jolie; Paul Bettany; Timothy Dalton; Steven Berkoff

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 ***
Directed by: David Yates
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes

The Tourist featured in Ricky Gervais’ much discussed performance at the Golden Globes this year. One of the few things not to feel the sharp edge of his tongue that night, he didn’t take the film itself to task (too much), instead pointing out that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organisation of journos responsible for nominations and voting at the Globes, had resoundingly panned the flick but it still managed to get nominated.
It wasn’t, he explained, just because the gathered press wanted the chance to hang out with the film’s stars Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. It was also down to the bribes. You’d have to assume he was joking. Mostly.
An old-fashioned chase flick, Angelina Jolie stars as international woman of mystery Elise Clifton-Ward. On the run from Interpol for reasons unknown, she chats up hapless, recently separated physics teacher, Frank Tupelo (Depp), en route to Venice.
Frank likes spy novels, Elise needs a dupe that the cops will think is former/current lover, Alexander Pearce, so that he can get away with stealing billions from a gangster. A tale of misdirection and unlikely love unfolds on the picturesque background of the city of canals.
Hot on the heels of the Depp and Jolie is Paul Bettany, playing a cop fixated on catching Pearce and the crime lord, Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff), whose money was nicked. Whatever will happen and will it all come to a head at an elaborate ball of some sort? You betcha!
Something else Gervais said about The Tourist that rings true was that its characters are “two dimensional”. He’s not wrong. Every one of them has all the depth of a paddling pool made for ants with no legs.
The mysterious heroine is exactly that. The befuddled hero we all know is going to grow into his role as an appropriate associate for a beautiful woman, does exactly what we want him to. Good guys good; bad guys bad; you know the drill. It’s the sort of stereotyping that never hurt a James Bond romp, especially in the Roger Moore days, and it does little to hurt the movie here either.
If it’s serious action with a considered attitude to the geopolitical ramifications of internatinoal espoinage and money laundering you want watch the news or possible a Bourne movie. If you want pretty people making quips and looking fabulous watch The Tourist. It is exactly the film you think it is.
The future appreciation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 may rest heavily with the concluding part of the film and the entire series that’s due out this summer.
As it stands, Part 1 feels like a technically accomplished Potter movie but an incomplete, dissatisfying one. Many of the things you’d expect from a Harry flick are absent – bloody quidditch, anything much to do with Hogwarts, its student body or teaching staff and the usual beginning, middle and end that stories tend to have. Instead the focus, almost from the start, is exclusively on Harry, Hermione and Ron.
The three intrepid wizardlings, now mostly grown up, have jacked in school in favour of wandering the world in search of the final horcruxes of Voldemort.
For fans of the books those last three words will make perfect sense. For the rest of us, just accept that what is being looked for is necessary to defeat the noseless bald bloke that’s been haunting Master Potter since the Philosopher’s Stone.
So after an abrupt beginning an action scene kicks off about five minutes into the film with little explanation as to what’s going on, the three get on the road to finding the horcruxes. And by on the road I mean bickering in a variety of woodland scenes with occasional stop-offs in the real world for action and/or exposition. There’s also a very cool animated segment that explains what the Deathly Hallows actually are that might just be the most visually interesting thing seen in the last three pictures.
It’s interesting in parts, and sometimes exciting but just as things start to get good the film ends. Just stops dead.
Seeing Part 2 this summer may soften the sting of how incomplete the first installment of The Deathly Hallows is. Maybe the two need to be enjoyed together to appreciate the full sweep of the story. At the moment though it feels like a film somebody got bored making halfway through and just gave up on.