I had been laid off from my job in 2009 because of the 2008 economic crisis, but thanks to lingering travel benefits under my union contract, we could still fly standby for free around the world. As Italians from New York, Italy had always called to us. Our very first overseas adventure was Venice a few years earlier. It was magical, romantic, and unforgettable, even if I shudder at the thought of how two wide-eyed 22-year-olds who had never been out of the country ventured off with barely any planning in a world before the internet was in our pockets, or the help of language translation apps and Google Maps.
But we survived, and I'd do it again.
Years later, after many more trips together, we planned several days in Rome.
On our last night, I proposed. She said yes... eventually. Honestly, she was so stunned she said nothing for several minutes. I had completely surprised her, despite what I thought was my obvious compulsive checking to make sure the ring was still in my pocket all week.
Nearly 15 years of marriage later, what does any of this have to do with a Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie movie?
Everything, actually.
About two months before our Rome trip, we were visiting my parents in upstate New York and decided on a perfect date night at the Palisades Center Mall, which at the time was one of the largest in the country, still shiny and exciting.
We planned for dinner and a movie: specifically, The Tourist, the film my then-girlfriend had been eagerly anticipating.
In 2010, Hollywood still ran on star power. You knew what was coming out months in advance through billboards, TV spots, and magazine covers. Two A-Listers in their prime? Studios sold tickets on just that alone.
We watched it and immediately loved it. We fell in love with the glamour, the flirtation, the luxe backdrop of old-world Venice. Following the movie, we enjoyed a memorable meal (that we still talk about) at an upscale Mexican spot that has since vanished, like many other restaurants.
That evening left us buzzing and even more excited as we planned our next Italian adventure in Rome. I immediately knew that this was where I would propose.
Later that summer, we bought the DVD the day it dropped and rewatched it that night. It still held up for us. We've since discovered that not everyone agrees. Many critics and some audiences gave it rough scores, but we don't see why. To this day, every few months, we cue it up for bedtime viewing, a little time machine back to January 2010, when our young love planned trips that shaped our lives together.
The Tourist, released December 10, 2010, is a romantic thriller directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the German filmmaker who had stunned the world four years earlier with his Oscar-winning drama The Lives of Others (2006). This marked a deliberate pivot for him from intense political intrigue in East Germany to something lighter, glossier, and more escapist. The Tourist was a hybrid of romance, comedy-tinged suspense, and old-school glamour.
Starring two of the biggest box-office draws on the planet at the time, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, The Tourist was produced by GK Films and distributed by Columbia Pictures. With a $100 million budget, it ultimately grossed a very respectable $278.8 million worldwide, proving that star power alone could still fill theaters in the final days before streaming dominance.
A loose remake of the 2005 French film Anthony Zimmer, The Tourist transplants the story to the iconic backdrops of Paris and Venice, turning the cities themselves into lavish supporting characters. The director himself called it “a travel romance with thriller elements,” and while there are undeniably humorous beats, I’ve always cringed at anyone labeling it outright comedy.
Yes, it’s playful at times, but the core is still romantic suspense.
The plot unfolds with classic mistaken-identity precision.
Angelina Jolie plays Elise Clifton-Ward, a poised, enigmatic British woman under constant surveillance by Interpol, led by Scotland Yard’s Inspector John Acheson (Paul Bettany), in coordination with the French police.
Elise is the former lover of Alexander Pearce, a financial genius-turned-fugitive who embezzled $2.3 billion from the vicious mobster Reginald Shaw (Steven Berkoff) and owes the British government £744 million in back taxes.
In the first moments of the film, we find Pearce, who has vanished (and is rumored to have had extensive plastic surgery), has sent Elise a cryptic note. It asks her to board a train to Venice and pick a random man of similar build to serve as a decoy to throw off the police who would be sure to follow her.
On the Paris-to-Venice express train, she selects Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp), a mild-mannered American high-school math teacher from Wisconsin, vacationing to mend a broken heart after a failed relationship. Frank is instantly flustered by this stunning stranger’s attention and reveals himself to be awkward, sweet, and utterly out of his depth.
What follows is a whirlwind of luxury hotels (the real Hotel Danieli in Venice steals scene after scene), candlelit dinners, a masked ball, rooftop chases, and high-speed boat pursuits through the canals of "The Floating City."
Elise begins coaching Frank on basic flirtation (“Women don’t like questions”), which leads to one of the film’s most charming lines (multiple variations of the phrase "Join me for dinner"). Later that evening, through an in-depth conversation over dinner, both the authorities and Shaw’s henchmen quickly believe Frank to be the surgically altered Pearce.
Narrow escapes, police interrogations, and growing attraction unfold throughout the second act.
Supporting players add texture: Timothy Dalton as the authoritative Chief Inspector Jones, Rufus Sewell in a shadowy role, and Italian comedian Christian De Sica as the smitten hotel concierge who provides comic relief.
The climax delivers the twist many saw coming, but that still lands with satisfaction: Frank is indeed Pearce, the surgery and voice-altering implant allowing him to hide in plain sight as the “ordinary” tourist. The mob is neutralized by snipers, Frank/Alexander leaves a massive check to pay the back taxes, and the two lovebirds sail away into a new life together.
The characters feel like elegant archetypes more than simple character creations, which is part of the film's old Hollywood charm. Elise begins as the quintessential femme fatale. She's cool, calculated, and using Frank as a pawn, but genuine emotion surfaces as she witnesses his vulnerability. Jolie glides effortlessly through the role with poise, although some critics found her to be "a touch smug."
Frank starts as the ultimate everyman with nervous tics, an e-cigarette constantly in hand (a sure sign of 2010 and allowed for Depp’s real smoking habit), and his comedic awkwardness. Depp’s portrayal draws from his quirky catalog, but here he dials it back to play “normal,” which some found jarring given his star persona. A handful of times, he appears to be playing "Captain Jack Sparrow" playing "Frank Tupelo," but at this point, I think that's just Johnny Depp.
Now, to truly appreciate The Tourist, or at least understand why it was made the way it was, one must spend time with its clearest cinematic ancestor: Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 masterpiece North by Northwest (which I covered a few years back).
Von Donnersmarck and his team of five credited writers (including Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes) openly aimed for a modern homage to that film’s glamorous, mistaken-identity chaos.
Hitchcock’s classic follows advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant), an ordinary man yanked into international espionage when spies mistake him for a nonexistent CIA agent named George Kaplan. Like Frank Tupelo, Thornhill is the quintessential “wrong man," refined yet hapless, thrust into a world of chases, trains, and sophisticated women. The parallels are deliberate and numerous. Both films include a mysterious woman (Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, Jolie in Tourist) selecting or ensnaring an innocent man on a train, turning an everyday journey into the launchpad for romance and danger.
The train sequences in both are masterclasses in flirtatious tension: Thornhill and Eve Kendall’s iconic dinner-car seduction mirrors Elise coaching Frank on how to properly invite her to dinner, but the connections run deeper.
North by Northwest is built on the same “wrong man” premise that drives The Tourist: an unassuming everyman pursued across glamorous locations by both authorities and villains because of a case of mistaken identity. While Hitchcock’s film careens from the United Nations to crop-duster fields in Indiana to the iconic climax on Mount Rushmore, The Tourist swaps American landmarks for Parisian train stations and Venetian canals, gondolas, and rooftops.
Both feature a "MacGuffin," that is, an object, device, or secret in a movie or story that drives the plot and motivates the characters, but is usually irrelevant in itself. This storyline tool was popularized by, who else, but Alfred Hitchcock. Often, this "thing" is something everyone chases, such as a briefcase, a stolen heirloom, or another object that only propels the action without the audience needing to know much about it. In North by Northwest, it was the fictional George Kaplan. In The Tourist, it was the stolen billions taken by Alexander Pearce.
Von Donnersmarck even echoed Hitchcock’s blend of romance, humor, and suspense, describing his own film as a “travel romance with thriller elements” in the exact spirit of North by Northwest’s lighthearted yet thrilling tone. The lavish masked ball in The Tourist feels like a direct descendant of the elegant parties and double-crosses in most of Hitchcock’s work. The final escape by boat carries a visual wink reminiscent of the film’s closing train-tunnel double-entendre.
Critics, however, were quick to point out where The Tourist falls short of its illustrious inspiration.
While North by Northwest sizzles with Hitchcock’s legendary precision, every frame, edit, and line of dialogue heightens suspense and wit, The Tourist, admittedly, often feels like a luxurious but leisurely vacation rather than a tightly wound thriller.
Cary Grant’s Thornhill is suave even in panic; Depp’s Tupelo, by contrast, sometimes comes across as bumbling, lacking the effortless charm that made Grant the perfect everyman hero. The chemistry between Grant and Saint simmers with genuine spark and danger, while reviews frequently noted that Jolie and Depp, for all their star wattage, never quite ignite the same fire.
Where Hitchcock builds unbearable tension in the crop-duster sequence (an ordinary man alone in an open field, attacked from the sky with no explanation), The Tourist’s canal boat chase, while beautifully shot, never reaches the same visceral panic because the stakes and pacing feel softer. One reviewer memorably described The Tourist as “a movie written by someone who has badly remembered North by Northwest but left out all the best bits.... The train pursuit, the glamorous woman, the mistaken identity were all present, yet somehow diluted."
Still, the homage isn’t without merit.
North by Northwest was Hitchcock’s love letter to 1950s glamour, stylish escapism, and the romance of travel.
The Tourist updates that formula for 2010, swapping political spies for financial criminals and mobsters while keeping the core fantasy intact: an ordinary person swept into extraordinary circumstances alongside a beautiful, mysterious partner. The Venice setting becomes its own Mount Rushmore, an iconic, labyrinthine backdrop that turns the city into a character.
In an era before superhero fatigue, both films prove that star power and on-location shooting can create pure cinematic escapism. Von Donnersmarck’s two-week script rewrite and breakneck 58-day shoot were clearly an attempt to capture that same breezy, confident energy Hitchcock achieved in his prime. While it didn't fully succeed (and few films do), the ambition to evoke North by Northwest gives The Tourist a nostalgic glow that most original stories sometimes lack.
Production on The Tourist was itself a chaotic mirror of its plot’s mistaken identities and last-minute twists. Multiple directors and casts rotated through before von Donnersmarck returned to the production after early disagreements. Opening versions of the film included plans for Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise, then Sam Worthington, for the starring roles.
The rushed schedule was dictated by Depp’s looming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides commitment.
Venice’s strict boat-speed limits complicated the chase (stunt coordinator Simon Crane ingeniously towed boats for realism), and the entire production—from reattachment to premiere—took just 11 months.
Cinematographer John Seale bathed everything in the romantic sunset's golden-hour glow, while James Newton Howard’s score swells with strings that echo Bernard Herrmann’s work on North by Northwest.
Critical reception was harsh. Rotten Tomatoes lists the film at 21%, while Metacritic offers a slightly better 37/100. Common complaints include slow pacing, predictable twists, and the leads' debated chemistry.
Audiences have been kinder, however, with a CinemaScore of "B," as many embrace the splendor of the backdrop and the escapism of the espionage.
The Tourist earned three Golden Globe nominations and Teen Choice awards, and proved that glossy star vehicles still had pull, even if those days were waning.
In retrospect, The Tourist feels like a time capsule of pre-streaming Hollywood: big budgets, bigger stars, European glamour, and unapologetic romance. For those of us who saw it at the right moment in our lives, it transcends its flaws.
Ultimately, The Tourist remains our private ritual: a glossy, imperfect gem that reminds us of young love, Italian dreams, and the night a movie about mistaken identities in Venice helped fuel our own real-life romance in Rome. It may not match Hitchcock’s precision in North by Northwest, which still hails as my personal second-favorite film of all time (behind another Hitchcock thriller, Rear Window), but The Tourist never tried to be a masterpiece. It tried to be fun, glamorous, and transporting, and for two people falling deeper in love, that was more than enough.
We still throw it on, smile at the glitz and glamour of a timeless city, and remember: sometimes the best stories aren’t the most critically acclaimed... they’re the ones that become part of your own.
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