The Tourist - movie review

Any film set mainly in Venice has an in-built appeal to audiences, and The Tourist, released four years ago, boasts excellent scenes set in that loveliest of cities, as well as a terrific cast. This is headed by Angelina Jolie as Elise Ward, and Johnny Depp as Frank Tupelo, and also includes Timothy Dalton, Steven Berkoff, and Rufus Sewell. Add to that a screenplay whose writers include Julian  Fellowes and Christopher McQuarrie, and you have a sure-fire hit on your hands. Or do you?

When I watch a relatively recent film, I like to do so without knowing too much about it, so I can approach it without preconceptions. After I'd seen  The Tourist, I was intrigued to find that there has been extensive debate as to whether it's a comedy, a romance or a thriller, as I too struggled to work out what kind of a film I was watching. To some extent, it doesn't matter, as long as you enjoy the film, and I did enjoy The Tourist. But I did feel that some unevenness of approach meant it wasn't quite as successful as it might have been. It was as if the film-makers couldn't make up their minds what they were creating.

The set-up is that Jolie is being watched in Paris - we gather, by British cops - because she has connections to a villain called Alexander Pierce. She receives a message from Pierce telling her to take a train to Venice, and pretend that a stranger bearing a resemblance to Pierce is the man himself. This she does, leading to an encounter with an American maths teacher played by Depp. From there, the complications increase.

There were some fun moments along the way, and some nice twists as well, although I found it hard to suspend disbelief. Berkoff plays a nasty gangster in an enjoyably over the top way, but some of the tension depends on the stupidity of one of the cops (Paul Bettany) and I found this hard to swallow. The Tourist has received very mixed reviews, but as long as one expects from it nothing more than pleasing light entertainment, I don't think it disappoints. Not a classic, but not a bad way to spend a relaxing hundred minutes.

Doctor Who - The End of Time: review

The End of Time was a two-part holiday special episode of Doctor Who which saw the departure of David Tennant, who has been superb in the role of the Doctor, and the arrival of Matt Smith. The story involved the attempt of the Master (played by John Simm, who was so good in Life on Mars) to take over Earth, and the intervention of the Time Lords, led by that one-time James Bond, Timothy Dalton. Aiding and abetting Tennant was the splendid Bernard Cribbins.

Given such a starry cast (Billie Piper and June Whitfield were among other famous faces that popped up) the show was always going to be fun to watch, and so it proved. As usual, I enjoyed Russell T. Davies’ script; he is a very good television writer, although his Doctor Who stories sometimes seem stretched out beyond their natural limits, with the extra time occupied by rather sentimental interludes, and this was for me the only weakness of The End of Time. Overall, though, it was good holiday entertainment.

I first watched Doctor Who in the days of the first Doctor, William Hartnell, and it’s interesting to see how writers have grappled over the year with the departure of their hero. In television, this may be due to an actor afraid of becoming type-cast, or even dying. Taggart survived the death of Mark McManus, and the show is still named after his character, although I don’t think the stories are quite as compelling as in the early days, when McManus was at his best and Glenn Chandler wrote some quite brilliant scripts.

In crime fiction, the author may simply tire of writing about his or her detective. Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls, although public pressure (and lots of money) persuaded him to revive the great detective. When Nicolas Freeling killed off Van der Valk, he had Arlette, the cop’s widow, take centre stage, although not with the same level of success. I once attended a talk given by P.D. James, when she described killing off your hero as ‘foolish’, and within the crime genre, I’m inclined to agree. But in the anything-goes world of Doctor Who, a Time Lord can transform himself and sometimes, as in the Tennant era, with dazzling results.