The Tourist (2010)

From Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the Academy Award winning German filmmaker for the 2007 Best Foreign Film – The Lives of Others, comes the 2010 drama-mystery-thriller, with some comedic humor, called THE TOURIST. Based on the 2005 French film Anthony Zimmer, the film tells the story of math teacher Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp), an American tourist, visiting Venice, Italy when he comes across with a beautiful but mysterious Englishwoman named Elise Ward (Angelina Jolie), who deliberately crosses his path in order to mislead those who are following her, such as a dangerous gangster and federal agents. The film also stars Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code) as Inspector John Acheson, Steven Berkoff (Beverly Hills Cop) as Reginald Shaw, Rufus Sewell (Dark City) as The Englishman, and Timothy Dalton (007 – The Living Daylights, License to Kill) as Chief Inspector Jones. I thought was a very entertaining movie that was also sexy, smart, and funny at the same time. Watching Angelina Jolie reminded me of Sophia Loren in some moments of the film while Johnny Depp’s performance I thought was great. He kept smiling throughout the film as I was watching it, the same way when I saw him in his last film before this in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Tom Cruise was originally gonna play the role of Frank, as did Sam Worthington. Thank god they dropped out to do other film roles instead because no one could’ve done it better the way Depp did. I’m surprised that film critics, such as Roger Ebert and Peter Travers, gave the film largely negative reviews about it. Ebert gave it two out of possible four stars and Travers gave it an F. As for me, I still give THE TOURIST a definite must see for all movie lovers and I also make it as one of the best films I’ve seen in 2010.