THE TOURIST

Wow. This is hands-down the most boring movie either of its high-profile stars has ever made. Devoid of tension, action and chemistry, The Tourist is a Venice-set thriller that does not thrill. At all.

Icy, glamorous Elise Clifton-Ward (Angelina Jolie) is the paramour of an internationally sought criminal, who’s being relentlessly hunted by a determined-bordering-on-obsessive Scotland Yard inspector (Paul Bettany). Schlubby American math teacher Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp), meanwhile, is visiting Italy and winds up embroiled in Elise’s world after they meet on a train. Soon, the duo are on the lam from the authorities and a ruthless crimelord (Steven Berkoff, doing his best impersonation of Anthony Hopkins), who’s anxious to get his hands on a stolen cache of several hundred million dollars.

Sounds promising, right? Add Oscar-winning director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck – who previously helmed The Lives of Others -- to the mix and you’d think you had all the makings for a pretty awesome movie... but you’d be mistaken.

Somehow, somewhere, everything about this film obviously derailed. First, you have its two leads who, individually, have become global superstars and sex symbols yet, when combined, have absolutely ZERO spark. There’s no zip, no magic, no smoulder, nuthin’. It doesn’t help that they seem to be acting in completely different movies – Jolie is in a glossy suspense yarn, while Depp is evidently in some sort of mistaken-identity comedy. Their characters are thin at best, and Depp is especially unconvincing in what is easily his worst, least-interesting onscreen performance to date. As I watched, I kept thinking the filmmakers would have been better off casting someone like Kevin James as Frank, and turning the whole thing into a slapstick farce.

Then there’s the story, which is sort of one giant “who cares?” It meanders along in a fairly straight, flat line from A to B without any discernable twists or turns. There’s no real peril for its players, no real color or flair in its telling, and no real intrigue at its core. It’s basically just two pretty people in a pretty city, ducking into corners and occasionally fleeing the bad guys.

Speaking of, and an example that illustrates The Tourist’s meh-ness: one of its key “chase sequences” takes place in the waters of Venice’s canals, and has Jolie steering a motorboat that’s going so slowly her pursuers keep up with her just by running along the banks. This is meant to be exciting? Similarly, the stunt work is so benign and dull that the film would have been quite fine without any of it.

So much could have gone right with The Tourist but, unfortunately for all involved, none of it actually does. Instead, it just proves you need more than just big names above the title to deliver top-notch, or even mid-notch, entertainment.