Paul Bettany: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Inspector John Acheson - The Tourist (2010)

As is probably becoming clear, Bettany has frequently found himself in projects in which he struggles to make something out of really sub-par material. He's often at his worst when he's in a project in which he can see the funny side while everyone around him wants to be deadly serious. Into the company of The Da Vinci Code and Priest we can now add The Tourist, an utterly risible meringue of a film which squanders every promising aspect laid before us. The Tourist is nominally a remake of the French romantic thriller Anthony Zimmer. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark (The Lives of Others), it follows American college teacher Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp) who has a chance encounter on a train with the attractive and enigmatic Elise Clifton-Ward (Angelina Jolie). Elise is wanted by British and French police in connection with her lover Alexander Pierce, a tax evader who has had surgery to alter his appearance. Frank becomes suspected of being Pierce, and it all kicks off from there... Despite passing nods to Roman mythology and Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Tourist is a completely empty thriller with nothing between its ears. Its plot is equal parts Shattered and Johnny Handsome with all the silly parts ramped up, and the more seriously the film takes itself the more painful it is to sit through. Bettany's task is a thankless one, but he makes it worse by playing everything with a stony face, treating even the frothiest line like it has immense weight. As a result we can't take him seriously, and without him there is nothing to drive the film.