The Tourist

When The Tourist was nominated for three Golden Globe awards, including acting nods for the two leads and a Best Picture nomination, it was reported that Angelina Jolie (and members of the press) had the initial reaction of laughing.  There was a mild hubbub about this, as well as the fact that the actors and movie were categorized in the "Comedy/Musical" section, when the movie was promoted as a romantic thriller.  All of these are good reasons to not watch The Tourist.  However, I'm a pretty big Johnny Depp fan, and I'm not adverse to a movie that wants to ogle Angelina Jolie.  How bad can it be?

Elise (Angelina Jolie) has been hanging out in Paris for a while, and she is being tracked by the French police and Interpol.  They are aware of her every move and everyone she interacts with; for her part, Elise is well aware of them, too.  One morning, as she goes about her normal routine, a courier delivers a letter to her.  The letter is from Alexander Pearce, her lover that she has not seen in over two years, as well as the reason she is being tailed all day, every day.  He tells her that he has a new face and that she should board a specific train to Italy, pick someone of his approximate height and weight, and talk to this stranger on the train.  The idea is that Interpol will assume that the random Alexander-esque fellow is Alexander, creating enough confusion for the real Alexander to swoop in and take Elise away with him.

There are several men on the train that fit the general description of Pearce, but Elise eventually chooses a shy math teacher on holiday, Frank, who is apparently unaware that he looks like Johnny Depp and has no reason to be shy or self-conscious.  The plan works beautifully, Elise wows Frank because she looks like Angelina Jolie and she's paying attention to him, and Interpol is certain that Frank is their man.  Until, that is, they check his ID and figure out he's Frank.  Criminals don't have Interpol's resources, though, and Pearce stole billions from a crook; these bad guys chase after Frank because they don't know any better, and Interpol doesn't interfere because they don't want to scare off Alexander Pearce.  Poor Frank is left bewildered and endangered by his chance encounter with Elise, and his only chance of survival comes from Elise, who feels bad for using him.  Or is it something more, I wonder...?

The basics of this story are a little old school, but they're not bad.  Mistaken identities are a classic source of both drama and comedy, but it's been a while since a major film has used this theme in a dramatic film.  That said, they do the whole thing wrong.  This movie could have played out like North By Northwest, but it makes the fatal choice of making the main character, Frank, a bumbling idiot.  Well, maybe that's a bit harsh, but his character is pretty awful.  He's shy, awkward, occasionally stammers, and he is always saying the wrong thing.  That would be fine if this was a comedy, but it has only slightly better comedic chops than Schindler's List.  In other words, if you're laughing, you're a racist asshole.  The other characters are fine, I guess, but the fun of romantic thrillers comes from the main characters being romantic and/or thrilling, and Frank is neither.  I wouldn't mind Frank's character if he were funny or dramatic or cute, but he's just a lame character, any way you slice it.

So, how was the acting?  Angelina Jolie played her part pretty darn well.  She had to be the sexy spy lady with a mischievous smile, and she played the part effortlessly.  It's not a great part for her, but she looks good and got to spend time in exotic locations to film it, so I'm not going to criticize her for taking such an easy role.  I liked Paul Bettany as the Interpol inspector that is obsessed with catching Pearce; his obsession makes him both clever and myopic, and I liked the idea of the main policeman in the story having such a critical flaw.  Timothy Dalton has a small role as Bettany's superior, and he has all the charm you would expect of a former James Bond.  Steven Berkoff became famous playing villains in the 80s, and age hasn't made him any less evil.  Sure, he's a little generic as a bad guy, but he's still fun to hate.  I was a little surprised to see Rufus Sewell show up in a movie I was watching (he's not exactly a sign of quality filmmaking), but I didn't mind him at all in his small role.  Johnny Depp, though, was pretty awful.  It's not that he did a bad job with his performance --- he played an awkward amateur quite well --- it's just that every choice he made with his character was the wrong one.  I don't want to be that jerk who argues that movies should only be a certain way, but the rest of The Tourist is not a comedy or a drama, it needs someone to act sexy or suave to make the movie work.  He opted for stupidly awkward.  It didn't work.

It'll take more than a Singapore Sling to forget this mess.

With so much of the cast doing a good job, but the main character falling flat, that leaves writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck with a somewhat tarnished product.  I really liked how the movie looked; the European locations made for some very pretty scenes, and von Donnersmarck clearly has an eye for wide shots.  The action scenes were done pretty well, including a boat chase scene that didn't completely suck.  And I mean that as a compliment.  I liked most of the acting, which shows that he was able to convey his concept of the film to most of the actors.  However, since he wrote Frank's character and directed Depp's performance, I can't avoid criticizing the man.  To give him credit, von Donnersmarck supposedly had less than eleven months to sign up for the movie, write the script, make the movie and have it ready for its premiere, which is hasty at any level of filmmaking, much less something that is expected to be a Hollywood blockbuster.  Now, I get why he and Depp made the choices they made with Frank's character --- it all makes sense by the end of the picture --- but I completely disagree with those choices.

Making bad movies is more tiring than it looks.

This would have just been a disappointingly mediocre movie if I was just left bewildered by Frank's character, but it gets worse.  There's a twist.  SPOILER ALERT: It turns out that Frank is really Alexander Pearce.  Yup.  It's not mistaken identity at all.  He instructed Elise to find someone that fit the same basic description as him (fit and about 6' tall) on the train, and she encountered him by chance, after considering many other options.  So, his plan could have totally failed if she chose any of the other twenty guys on the train that fit his description.  Fabulous.  But it gets better.  When he's alone, Frank acts like Frank.  He never breaks character or gives any hint that there is something beneath his clumsy facade.  I'll be honest with you, I saw the twist coming.  Unfortunately, it was the product of me thinking, "You know what would make this movie much, much worse?"  In other words, the twist negates 95% of the whole damn movie.  You expect me to accept that a master thief's master plan was to be chased by Interpol and hardened criminals until he has the chance to say "Psyche!" and run off into the sunset?  No, I can't accept that.  It's just so bad.  It ruins a perfectly mediocre movie and makes it a bad movie.

Salt

Yes, indeed, "who is Salt?"  With a question like that, you might expect Salt to be a movie of mistaken identities, or perhaps something involving multiple personalities or amnesia (a la Bourne).  Those expectations will not be met by this film.

Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is happily married to a decent-looking (and I'm being generous to August Diehl here) spider-scientist.

No, I meant a scientist that studies spiders, not the other way around.

A few years back, before they were married, Evelyn was captured in North Korea and accused of espionage.  Somehow, her hubby-to-be persuaded the powers that be to release her, and they got married in one of the least mutually attractive film marriages of all time.  Still bloodied and bruised from her interrogation, Evelyn tells her man that she is really a CIA agent, and that he will never be safe as her husband.  Fast-forward a few years, and the completely healed Evelyn Salt is back to work with the CIA, along with her superior officer, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber).  The pair are called in to check out the validity of a supposed Russian spy that is looking to defect and, I assume, wants to live in America to drink Coca-Cola and wear blue jeans.  This defector, Vasilly Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski), tells Salt, Winter, and a room full of agents that are monitoring for heart rate and fact-checking details, about Day X.  This is a long-term plan by a former Soviet spy master where he planted child assassins into America, with the intent of using them (after they grew up) as sleeper agents to one day destroy the United States.  In fact, a sleeper agent is supposed to assassinate the Russian president tomorrow.  That agent's name is...Evelyn Salt.  Wha...?!?

After such a heinous accusation, the obvious next step is to quarantine Salt, to at least make sure she isn't a Russian sleeper assassin, right?  That's what agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) tries to do.  However, he makes the mistake of letting her call her bug-loving hubby first --- and he's not answering the phone!  Oh no!  The next thing you know, Salt is beating the living hell out of her fellow CIA agents and pulling some serious Mission: Impossible stunts to escape and learn her husband's fate.  But...if she's just interested in finding her husband safe and sound, why is she preparing to assassinate the Russian president at the same time?  Just who is this Salt, anyway?

If you are looking for a highly intelligent spy caper, or at least something that could have been adapted from a book, Salt is not the movie for you.

NOT the inspiration for the movie, but an excellent read.

On the other hand, if you are in the mood for an absolutely ridiculous action movie, this might be right up your alley.

What keeps this film from being a serious spy movie?  The acting, for starters.  Angelina Jolie is fine as the title character, but her role is meant to leave the audience guessing, so she plays it pretty stone-faced.  She performs her stunts very well, though, which balances that out a bit.  The only part of her performance that I didn't care for was her running scenes; I've seen people run fast, but there is no way Angelina Jolie was running fast enough to break a nine-minute-mile, much less outrun half a dozen athletic government agents that are not wearing a sexy skirt.  Liev Schreiber was similarly unemotional, but adequate in his part.  I'm not sure if I am just indifferent to the man, or if I still hold a grudge for his part in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Yeah, that's how I felt when I watched that movie, too.

I actively disliked the normally likable Chiwetel Ejiofor, if only because his character bobbed between Batman-level anticipation of Salt's moves and idiotic mistakes, like leaving her alone in an unlocked room.  The rest of the cast was not particularly noteworthy, but I would like to one bit part.  Andre Braugher, one of the great speaking voices in modern movies, had about 15-20 minutes of screen time and only two lines; has nobody seen how good he was in Homicide: Life on the Streets?  Somebody give the man a decent role!

Phillip Noyce is no stranger to directing silly action movies.  After all, he gave us The Saint and my all-time favorite blind samurai movie, Blind Fury.

Don't judge a book by its cover, but it's probably okay to judge movies by their posters.

Noyce does a very good job with the action scenes, which make up a large part of the movie.  I don't know if I completely buy a non-super-powered Jolie beating up hallways full of armed government agents, but Noyce made it look plausible, at least.  The direction falters when any emotion is supposed to be shown.  Every emotion is muted; I would be shocked if I was working with someone who was accused of being a sleeper agent, but everyone in this movie kind of takes it with a grain of, um, sand.  I understand that some scenes are meant to be misleading (this is a spy movie, dumb or not), but there is no emotional payoff to any of this.  It doesn't have to be huge (look at the Bourne series, for instance), but this movie needed more than the script supplies.

I keep mentioning that this is a silly or dumb action movie, but I haven't really gone into detail so far.  I just wanted to get the boring critiques out of the way first.  The moment when I realized that this was not going to be a realistic or gritty movie was when Angelina Jolie's character (who looks very much like her) marries August Diehl (who looks very much like Peter Doherty).  That alone set off warning lights in my brain.  The next bit of silliness involves the defecting Russian who escapes CIA headquarters because he was hiding a retractable knife in his boot.  How did that get past the already-established-in-the-film high security protocols?  Whatever.  The important thing is that the audience understands why Salt is running from the CIA.  At the 30 minute mark, the answer is...because she doesn't want to be caught.  At the 45 minute mark, that reason hasn't changed.  In fact, it isn't until the climax (or, if you're clever, the hour mark) that you know for sure why she has done anything that she has done in the movie.  And it's not like there is any suspense surrounding her motivations; it's just part of the story that the plot has conveniently left out.  There are a few other laughable moments --- Jolie disguised as a busty Ralph Maccio (my wife's description) and a military computer that uploads with the speed of dial-up --- but it was the complete lack of suspense surrounding Salt's inexplicable actions that really bothered me.

This is a very solid action flick, though.  Jolie looks good and tough in all of her stunts (except her distance running), and some of her stunts are pretty damn cool.  I liked that, for a little while anyway, the government agents (who you just know are outmatched) actually keep up with Salt for a while; her first getaway is a car chase where the CIA are right behind her, despite a series of stunts that would have been the climax in most other chase scenes.  Jolie was convincing in the rest of the fight scenes, too, beating up and exploding a few dozens godless Russians here and there.  Some of the action scenes were surprisingly inventive, too.  It's too bad we never actually see any sort of planning stages for these attacks, because I think that would have added an extra layer of awesome to a story that needed a little more of that key ingredient.

There is something to be said for the film's pace, though.  The story is definitely the weak point, but it is smart enough to have chase scene after chase scene until the movie is over.  I will give Jolie and the other actors credit for never winking at the camera, either.  Yes, this is a ludicrous action movie.  But it is an Action movie, with a capital "A."

Of course, that's more of a "is it a good movie?" sort of rating.  If I'm in the mood to laugh at the stupid plot and just bask in the gratuitous chases, I give this a Lefty Gold rating of

Wanted

Casting Angelina Jolie in a comic book movie is so obvious, I can't believe that it took until 2008 for somebody to make it happen.  She's already played the physically (and proportionally) impossible part of Lara Croft, so why not take on the world of anti-gravity breasts and zipperless spandex unitards that is comic books?  It's not like they're going to take away her Oscar; Halle Berry already proved that with Catwoman.  So why not have a little mindless fun, right?

Wanted is a comic book adaptation, but the property is not a long-established one, so the story is new to most viewers.  Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) plays an average Joe living a below-average life.  He hates his job, he hates his boss, he hates his girlfriend, he hates his best friend (who is sleeping with his girlfriend), he hates the father that left him as an infant, and he hates the panic attacks he gets when any of these irritate him more than usual.  One day, Fox (Jolie) arrives and tells Wesley that his life is in danger and that his late father (David O'Hara) was a super-powered assassin.  It takes a cross-town shootout and car chase to make that seem plausible, but it works.  Fox takes Wesley to The Fraternity, an ancient secret society of assassins.  The group's head, Sloan (Morgan Freeman), explains that Wesley must assume the mantle of his father and avenge him, or Wesley will surely be killed by his father's assassin, Cross (Thomas Kretschmann).  Naturally, this takes some convincing.  In one of the movie's more memorable moments, Wesley is given a gun (for the first time) and told to shoot the wings off of some flies --- or he will be dead in thirty seconds.  Wesley begins to panic and the world slows down for a few moments, until he shoots.  Surprisingly (well, not really.  It's a movie.  But it would be surprising if you were Wesley), he has shot the wings off.  It turns out that Wesley's panic attacks were the misunderstood symptom of his body rushing extraordinary amounts of blood and adrenaline to his brain.  This superhuman ability can make Wesley able to move faster and notice more than average humans.  I guess that's a little more plausible than a radioactive spider bite.  This ability and natural talent are why Wesley is uniquely qualified to be the man who takes Cross out.

After a brief detour to quit his job and knock out his best friend, Wesley begins to train in earnest.  He is trained in marksmanship by the Gunsmith (successful rapper and emotionless actor Common), knives by the Butcher, how to take punishment by the Repairman, explosives by the Exterminator (Konstantin Khabenskiy), and the assassin life in general by Fox.  One of the important lessons in The Fraternity is the secret of the Loom of Fate.  This loom stitches a fabric that hides a binary code in the missed stitches.  The code spells out names, and The Fraternity kills the people whose names are stitched by the loom.  Yes, that's right...these international super-powered assassins are taking their cues from a magic loom.  Fox justifies this by saying that Fate wants these people dead, so if you "kill one, and maybe save a thousand."  Maybe.  Wesley is eventually experienced enough to take on Cross, but that just starts a whole new set of problems for Wesley.

The acting in this movie is pretty good for an action movie.  James McAvoy handles the lead role well, transforming from wuss to bad-ass in less than two hours, but still maintaining his charm.  He's a little whiny for the first bit of the film, but that has more to do with the character and the writing than his acting.  Angelina Jolie plays a supporting role in the movie, but it's a pretty big supporting role.  Her job here is basically to look sexy and cool, so it's not exactly her most demanding work.  Still, she look comfortable as an action star and plays the exasperated instructor to McAvoy well.  Morgan Freeman gets a rare opportunity to indulge his bad boy side as the leader of the assassins, but he is still playing his typical wise man role.  In other words, he's Morgan Freeman (which is awesome) and gets to swear in this movie.  Konstantin Khabenskiy makes his English-language debut after working with director Timur Bekmambetov on several Russian-language films (including the excellent Nightwatch).  He is just the adorable Russian guy here, but he's likable.  Terrence Stamp makes a brief appearance, and his presence exudes a sense of calm cool to a movie that is all about big and loud.  Sure, he deadpans all his dialogue, but it suits his character.  The rest of the cast turns in decent, but not particularly noteworthy performances, with the exception of Common, who still hasn't convinced me that he should act.

Visually, this film is amazing.  I remember being nervous about the film after watching the previews, but the special effects looked great in the context of the film.  Timur Bekmambetov has a gift for stunning visuals, but this movie is especially impressive.  The man can direct action, too, which is a big plus.  I think this movie's greatest strength is the variety of the action sequences.  There are a lot of shoot-out scenes (which makes sense, given Wesley's character), but they offer a lot of small but important variations.  As the film goes on, Wesley plays a larger and more impressive part in these scenes, until the inevitable huge shoot-'em-up ending.  It was interesting how some fairly subtle clues about Wesley's father are laid out in early action scenes, too.  Heck, I'm even okay with the ridiculousness of the "curved bullet" idea that is so central to most of these scenes.  Aside from the shoot-outs, though, there are a lot of other high quality action scenes.  The driving stunts are far beyond over-the-top, but their ridiculousness actually fits the action in the movie.  And there's some knife fights.  That's always a plus. 

Wanted is adapted from the comic of the same name by Mark Millar, who also wrote Kick-Ass.  This movie takes only the very basic principle of the comic and then makes its own story from there.  That's not a bad move on the screenwriter's part; the comic has Wesley and The Fraternity as super-villains, so there is no true hero to the story.  This script tries to show some heart and does a great job making these characters far more sympathetic than they are in the source material.  That makes this a rare exception, where the Hollywood version of something is far more palatable than the original material.  Of course, the whole "bending bullets" and Loom of Fate thing are absolutely ridiculous additions.  The magic loom is particularly stupid and I am amazed that some screenwriter came up with that as a story element.  It's even more amazing that the idea made the final cut of the film.  The clumsiness with that aspect of the writing (how do we make assassins look like good guys?  Two words: magic loom!) adds quite a bit of lameness to the movie, but it's not a fatal flaw.  Like the comic that it is based on, Wanted was never about the story so much as it was about the ain't-it-cool moments.  In that regard, this movie definitely succeeds.