CINEMA: The Tourist

Take one of the world’s most beautiful women and place her in one of its most romantic cities with an equally attractive and charming man and what do you get? A film so slow it is just like an amble through the quiet backwaters of Venice.

The Tourist doesn’t so much stroll as take two steps forward, stop to have a cup of coffee, wander on another three paces and then stand admiring the scenery for around twenty minutes. Considering it’s meant to be something of an action movie makes this lack of pace or forward thrust seem extremely odd, but it is very pretty.

Elise (Angelina Jolie) is the beautiful woman being tracked by the British secret services as she wends her (slow) way through Italy. She is the known accomplice of a man who has absconded with large amounts of money belonging to mob boss and all round bad guy Reggie (Steven Berkoff) and the policeman keeping her under surveillance (Paul Bettany) is convinced she is travelling to Venice to rendezvous with her one time lover. However, on the train to Venice Elise bumps into Frank (Johnny Depp), an American teacher who agrees to accompany her in order to put her trackers off the scent.

At this point the film stops for one of its scenery admiring pauses as the canals, palaces and plazas are beautifully bathed in watery sunlight. It then stutters into a brief period of motion as Frank is shot at, chased, arrested and subsequently rescued by Elise. By the time the inevitable and highly predictable plot twist arrives you may find you’ve missed it because you’ve nodded off. As an advertisement for the pleasures of touring Venice The Tourist couldn’t do a better job, but as an entertainment it’s as slow as a gondola passing up the Grand Canal.