The Tourist

Hollywood’s latest Euro-thriller remake gives Jérôme Salle’s 2005 film Anthony Zimmer a nice, unnecessary warming over. And so what could be a glamorous romantic thriller of confused-identity capering in Paris and Venice becomes an inoffensively mediocre, star-driven diversion. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie have a fine time trading variations on the theme of poise, but the movie itself is a strangely languid affair. Maybe it thinks it’s luxuriating. Or maybe it has assumed its audience rather slow on the uptake. Filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the Oscar-lauded but otherwise barely vetted director of The Lives of Others, here co-writing with Valkyrie‘s Christopher McQuarrie and The Young Victoria‘s Julian Fellowes, assembles all the necessary elements, but can’t seem to keep the spark of life. Co-starring Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Rufus Sewell and movie-villain veteran Steven Berkoff, all unchallenged.