Johnny Depp stars as an innocent U.S. tourist who falls for a mysterious British beauty (Angelina Jolie) in the romantic thriller The Tourist. (Sony Pictures)

Few movies have had the odds stacked so highly in their favour as The Tourist.

Its director is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, maker of the foreign-language Oscar winner The Lives of Others (2007). The screenplay is by von Donnersmarck and a couple of fellow Academy Award winners, Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park). And at the top of the bill are the seldom-disappointing Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, two mega-movie stars being paired for the first time as a romantic couple.

Venice is gorgeous and so is Jolie, but those are the only good things to be said about this silly, sluggish excuse for a romantic thriller.

All that, plus the story is set in Venice, Italy, which is to cities what Angelina Jolie is to feminine beauty – a trifle overripe, but still a pleasure to look at. What could possibly go wrong?

Lots, as it turns out. In The Tourist, Venice remains its gorgeous old self and Jolie, her gorgeous young self. But those are the only good things to be said about this silly, sluggish excuse for a romantic thriller.

The Tourist is based on a 2005 French picture, Anthony Zimmer, which starred Sophie Marceau and Yvan Attal. Its obvious antecedents, though, are the stylish international mysteries of Alfred Hitchcock – think To Catch a Thief or The Man Who Knew Too Much. Jolie clearly knows that. She plays a haute couture-wearing femme fatale with the cool poise of Grace Kelly and the exotic allure of Ingrid Bergman. Her appearance is a winking homage to old-school elegance, complete with diamond-studded necklace and elbow-length gloves.

Depp, however, is hopelessly miscast in the Jimmy Stewart role of the ordinary American, who falls for her charms and gets tangled in a web of intrigue. Not only is Depp wrong for the part, he barely bothers to make an effort. As a guy preposterously named Frank Tupelo, he’s supposed to be a math teacher from Wisconsin. Instead, he looks like the lead singer of a ’90s indie rock band. Or like a cleaned-up version of his flamboyant Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Frank, the tourist of the title, is on a train to Venice, reading a spy novel and minding his own business, when Jolie’s mysterious Elise Clifton-Ward comes sashaying down the aisle and picks him as her dupe. The British beauty is on the run from Interpol and Scotland Yard, who hope she’ll lead them to Alexander Pearce, a cunning thief and her former lover. Pearce, who has absconded with billions in illegal funds and undergone radical plastic surgery, is communicating with Elise via written messages. He’s instructed her to head to Venice and find a stranger who fits his physical description in a bid to put the law off his scent.

Frank, a widower, is smitten with Elise and figures she’s coming on to him when she later invites him to share her room at the palatial Hotel Danieli. But it turns out the police aren’t the only ones tracking Elise. The money Pearce stole belonged to a brutal British gangster (Steven Berkoff), who arrives in Venice with his Russian lackeys in tow, determined to recover his fortune.

The plot has a big twist so predictable you could see it coming in the opening credits (if the movie had any). We might not mind the obvious, however, if the dialogue was witty, the action scenes playful and Jolie and Depp had some chemistry. But the two actors generate about as much heat as a couple of accountants discussing tax write-offs.

Neither seems particularly committed to this project. Apart from essaying a posh British accent, Jolie doesn’t bother to establish her character’s credibility. She simply plays on her public image as a glamorous movie star. More goddess than fugitive, she seems to float above the crowds of mere mortals surrounding her. She even swings her hips like a metronome, Marilyn Monroe-style, when she walks.

She’s absurd, but at least she’s having fun. Depp, on the other hand, drifts through his performance like an unmoored gondola. A lively swashbuckler in the Pirates flicks, here, he barely makes an attempt at physical comedy during a rooftop chase in his pyjamas. And as the stereotypical clueless American tourist, he delivers his few comic lines with indifference — which, to be fair, is all they deserve. Sample:

Italian hotel clerk: Buon giorno.

Frank: Bon jovi.

That’s as funny as it gets, folks. Did McQuarrie and Fellowes really write this?

The other actors come off as though they’re over-compensating for Depp’s slackness. Berkoff, the punk playwright and veteran screen heavy, does his level best to convince us he has ice water in his veins. Paul Bettany, as an overzealous Scotland Yard agent, is admirably weaselly and supercilious. Timothy Dalton, as his insouciant superior, is what James Bond would have been like if he’d moved into a desk job.

Their efforts are for naught. Like a shady travel agent, The Tourist promises a luxurious excursion into thrills and romance but ends up delivering a third-class jaunt to the land of missed opportunities. Skip this movie and instead rent last year’s Julia Roberts-Clive Owen vehicle Duplicity, a clever mystery that comes a great deal closer to capturing the charm of vintage Hitchcock.

The Tourist opens Dec. 10.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.