The Pt. 1 in the title of this post refers to a two part review, not the series itself.
Hmmm! Watched one and a bit episodes of this. Not at all convinced. Why all the hype in the press/media? Jamie Dornan isn’t compelling. When I found out he’s a model turned actor it was like, ‘well, that figures’.
Structurally it ought to work. We should want to know how The Man wound up in hospital with no memory, and why there’s a guy buried alive in a barrel. But I found myself struggling to engage with any of the ‘characters’, many of whom seem paper thin.
Let’s start with Dornan’s The Man – who may or may not be the titular ‘tourist’: his reaction to a huge truck attacking him, prior to the crash and resulting amnesia, is that of a macho jerk, and not very believable. So, from the get go, I dislike him.
And from then on he carries on, in sub-Western genre brooding silent tough guy mode, as an assortment of ‘other folk’ all behave as if they’ve got serious chunks of personality missing, in order to collude in the prolongation of something I wasn’t interested in to start with.
So in episode two I started scrolling through the many interminable bumbling functionary type scenes, before finally thinking, screw this.
I even read reviews suggesting this was a great comedy. Seriously? The Helen Chambers character, is she funny for constantly seeming diffidently embarrassed? Not in my world.
A scene that sums it all up for me is when The Man, and what appears to be his ex, get held up on a road due, it turns out, to copulating turtles (ok, that sounds funny written down here, but believe me, on screen it isn’t). The Man reinforces his tough guy jerk persona, and my initial dislike starts turning to hatred.
One suspects that prior to the accident he was a bad man doing bad things. And perhaps that’s why his ex isn’t telling him she knows who he is? (Why was she ever with him? Why is she still hanging around him?) He’s such a cock! So I simply don’t care.
One thing I noticed on some of the comments sections of positive reviews (e.g. Guardian and Independent) was the preponderance of women digging it. The cynic in me says this must be down to them fancying JD. How depressing!
Not going to waste any more time on this. Rather like a male model type, this thinks it’s good looking and therefore interesting. I found it a grinding bore.
Pt. 2
Ok, so the following day, having written the above, I find myself going back to The Tourist. And, I guess, maybe I need to eat a little slice o’ the ol’ ‘umble pie?
I won’t totally disown all of the above. But, to be fair, as the saying goes, this isn’t as bad as I initially thought. I’ve gradually warmed to Elliot Stanley, and in staying with it, it finally wound me in.
So what did I get most wrong? Well, it is, occasionally, a bit funny, for starters. And I am sufficiently intrigued by it all to want to know what it’s all about. Or at least where it’s all going. On the other hand it is still an odd assemblage of a load of jumbled old clichés. And some of the characters are wafer thin.
It also partakes of the modern TV/film ‘trope’ (eugh!) of never-ending plot twists; pile ‘em high, an’ keep em’ coming. But all in all, I’ve warmed to it sufficiently to decide I will follow it to the end. All I know is it’ll be pretty dark and prob’ also a little bit funny,
One of the things I still don’t like about such ‘black comedies’, however, from the darkly brilliant Fargo, to this lesser essay in that tradition, is the normalisation of ‘collateral damage’; many the innocent bystander is butchered, in pursuit, essentially, of couch potato consumer entertainment.
Does the normalisation of such violence feed into the same culture in which despicable lunatics like the Christchurch shooter see themselves as gunslinging ‘heroes’ in a first-person shoot ‘em up console game?
Any road, I’m revising this up from one and a half to three stars. Better than I initially thought, but a long way from classic or essential.
Pt. 3
Ok, so it’s now several days later, and after the Part 2 post, above, I’ve finally finished The Tourist. And, I have to say, I’m back to a downer on it.
I thought I’d post part three here – not that anyone knows or cares! – as opposed to doing a new post, just to keep it all in one place. Truth be told I’m expending way more time and energy on all this than the series or my interest in it merits. But, well… whatever!
So, there’s a gurt big ‘doors of perception’ segment (an idea developed quite literally), when Elliot accidentally imbibes a big dose of Kosta’s LSD-laced water.
As a one-time psychedelic psychonaut, of sorts, I find such scenes quite intriguing (and potentially unsettling!). This one was done, initially – the onset of ‘the trip’ – quite well, tailing off into something – the whole doors of perception bit, alluded to above, done almost too literally – much less psychedelic, but, I suppose, easier for viewers to digest.
I’m not quite sure what I think about this whole segment, which comes in either episode four or five (can’t quite recall!?). It’s not as weird as many a bit in Twin Peaks (not that I watched all of that!), but it is bit weird in the context of it’s own otherwise quite humdrum mode of delivery. The only other element akin to it is Kosta’s whole ‘imaginary’ or hallucinatory brother.
One of the biggest issues I wound up having with The Tourist in the end, is how little likeable humanity there is in it. Elliot Stanley both is, post bump on the head, and was, much more so pre-amnesia, a sociopathically selfish man; Luci, his ex, is a vacuous damaged opportunist thrill seeker; and the potentially nicest person, copper Helen Chambers is, in actual fact, such damaged goods, that really she’s not so nice after all.
And these are, one assumes, the folk we’re supposed to root for and take to heart. Aren’t they!? Their antagonists – Kosta, Billy Nixon and cold-hearted bent career-cop Lachlan Rogers (potentially one of the more interesting characters) are all well and truly horrid. Only the most cypher like peripheral characters might be just about alright. They usually wind up as uninteresting bit players, or else get killed.
And this brings us (partial spoiler alert) to the end. Like the litany of complaints I have about the folk populating this drama, it is, ultimately, crushingly bleak and negative. Is the emoji of a burrito Helen sends Stanley, as he expires (we assume; all the signposts indicate this) by his own hand, part of the comedic thread?
If it is, it’s obsidian dark comedy. Comedy that laughs at the futility of life. I have to confess, when this ended, having initially loathed it, then mellowed to it, I once again came to dislike it. And so, after all the above, I’m settling on two stars. Not the best investment of my time I’ve ever made.
