JOHNNY DEPP IS A NERD AGAIN IN THE TOURIST
With magnificent cinematography in Venice, The Tourist takes filmviewers on a journey, with director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck hoping to dupe us so that we will fall for the narrative and not grasp the convoluted plot. Elise Clifton-Ward (played Angelina Jolie), dolled up as usual, evades some sort of surveillance in Paris to take a train to Venice after receiving a mysterious note. When she walks through the train for a vacant seat, she sits opposite Frank Tupelo (played by Johnny Depp), a disheveled Community College math instructor from Wisconsin. Soon we learn that she is trying to meet her apparent boyfriend who stole a couple of billion pounds, as he kept the books for crimelord Reginald Shaw (played by Steven Berkoff) and then absconded with the cash. Scotland Yard is involved, as there are millions in unpaid taxes on the gambling earnings. She befriends Tupelo, whom she invites to stay with her in a suite at a posh hotel overlooking the Grand Canal, so the crimelord assumes that he is her boyfriend, having changed his identity, and his minions try to capture him. And the plot continues to thicken. Does that fact that Frank’s surname is Tupelo give away the plot or just add to the humor? MH