Out In The Thriller Night- Johnny Depp’s The Tourist (And That Woman With The Big Lips Too)

DVD Review

The Tourist, starring Johnny Depp, Angela Joie

For starters I am almost always willing to take a chance on anything, any film that the madcap actor (and my muse the late Hunter Thompson’s friend) Johnny Depp puts his name to. With rare exceptions (the big one being his role as that self-same Hunter Thompson in the film adaptation of his book Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas) I have not been disappointed. And while I was not disappointed here the story line, and the antic –laden thriller did not do justice to his, or co-star Angela Joie’s (she of the big lips in the title), talents.

After all how hot and bothered is one to get over the whereabouts of a crackerjack thief, dough thief, big dough, billions and that is big dough even today, from a British gangster, and from the British tax boys looking for their graft, named Alexander Pearce anyway. And also constantly following a beautiful woman with big luscious red lips and a quaky English accent and who is filled to the brim, filled I tell you, with ennui looking to meet her man. And of course that gangster, that nasty gangster full of hubris and quirky habits. The problem though, and this may have to do with the nature of star power and Hollywood’s take on it, is how far into the movie will it take to figure out who that Mister Pearce really is. Guess?

In The Matter Of The Zen Western- Johnny Depp’s Dead Man- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Johnny Depp’s Dead Man.

DVD Review

Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, Robert Mitchum, eerily edgy music by Neil Young, Miramax 1995

Sure, I have taken plenty of shots at variations on the great American West, past and present, from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove to The Last Picture Show from The Wild Bunch to Crazy Hearts and everything in between. As well, I have always been glad, glad as hell, to review any movie starring Johnny Depp that might come my way. So here we have the combination of Johnny Depp as, well, Johnny Depp as usual (except maybe for those seemingly endless Pirate sequels) taking on an edgy role that less talented or more timid male actors would have walked away from, way a way from.

No one doubts that the old Hollywood (and dime store novel) vision of the old John Wayne "howdy, partner" American West is long gone. And with the ground-breaking work of The Wild Bunch back in the 1970d we have seen, well we have seen, more plausibly views of that old time West, including some pretty unsavory characters in search of fame and fortune around the edges of the great frontier before it melted at the turn of the 20th century. That pasting of the frontier, of course, did not stop anybody with the least carefree spirit or who was just plain tired of the “civilized” East from heading by anyway they could to the great expanses of the old-time West. And that is where William Blake (played by Johnny Depp), no not the 18th century mad man English poet and supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution (although that mistake plays a part in the plot), but an accountant, for god’s sake, enters the story.

William Blake’s transformation into a man of the West complete with notches on his revolver, seemingly in slow-motion at times and all in black and white, is what drives this curious film. We have an educated “savage," Native American, savage white man bounty-hunters, a twisted rich land-owners (played by the late Robert Mitchum) and every mangy "old dog" who made it, or did not make it in the West. And every pathology known to humankind showed its face in this fierce portrayal of the West but also, a very surprising positive portrayal of Native American culture and its demise with the advance of the white man. William Blake, accountant, is one of Johnny Depp’s edgier performances, no question, and if you can stay with the zen aspect of the thing a very well done performance. Not for everyone, and certainly not for those who might still be clinging to some John Wayne idea of the West.