Anyone who has seen "The Lives of Others" is no doubt already a fan of Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. He can pull me in without pushing the standard conditioned-reflex buttons most directors use: music, back-lighting, voice-over...you know...
Angelina Jolie ("Salt") is her usual enigmatic, tantalizing self, relying on a poker face which provides a blank tablet on which we write all the emotions we expect her character to experience. And of course she's lovely... Skinny, but lovely....
Johnny Depp ("Public Enemies" and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise) is fully capable of playing a grown up. He has proven it over and over, so are we going to keep calling him "Johnny?" Hasn't he earned "John" by now? Of course we still allude to Jimmy Stewart.... and Jimmy Cagney... Oh never mind!
Anyway... Johnny Depp is our eponymous tourist, a community college math teacher on vacation, picked at random by Jolie to confuse the gangsters and cops who are trailing her. They all hope she will lead them to her boyfriend who has stolen an astronomical sum from the gangster and has spent some of it on extensive plastic surgery and a new identity, so he can't be spotted. Naturally Depp is mistaken for the thief. His character is sooo American: a little naïve, a little gauche and more than a little scared. His futile attempts at speaking Italian insult the Italians because they always turn out to be in Spanish.
Paul Bettany ("Creation") is a British agent hot on Jolie's trail, much to the chagrin of his boss, played by Timothy Dalton ("Hot Fuzz"). Expect lots of humor, gorgeous clothes, swanky hotels, elegant surroundings and an interesting (bare) foot race on the tiled roofs of Venice as a pajama-clad Depp flees mobsters with guns. (His character's not very athletic so he really looks authentic!)
This one will open big! They had to turn away over 100 would-be screeners because the theater was full.
Oh, one last thought: Be sure to suspend disbelief, okay?
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