The Tourist

Hollywood and European glamour collide, leaving the scattered fall-out that is Oscar-winning director Florian Henckel von Donnersmark's The Tourist. Jolie stars as enigmatic beauty Elise. She's under surveillance by gangster Reggie Shaw since her boyfriend, mysterious embezzler Alexander Pearce, has him monumentally pissed off. Hapless tourist Frank (Depp) – perhaps math academia's only first-class traveller – is the target of her faux-affections in order to confuse poor Scotland Yard. Predictably, none of them are what they seem, so it's fairly easy to guess who really works for whom.

Hollywood is as Hollywood does, and The Tourist's head-on approach is almost refreshing. What kills it is the self-aggrandizing tone and showbiz cliche that pervades it from start to finish. Like a trashy sunbed parlour, the film labours under the pretence that glamorous starlets speaking bad French with cardboard cut-out Englishmen in suits (that means you, Bettany) makes for a suspenseful thriller with elegant European refinement. But isn't Venice pretty? [Nicola Balkind]