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Suspense flick without suspense is ... wait for it ... |
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Written by Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune
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Friday, 01 December 2006 |
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‘Turistas’
1 out of 5
Josh Duhamel, Olivia Wilde, Melissa George
R / 1 hr. 29 mins. /
Cinemark 16,
Cinemark 12 Greeley
Carmike 10
Metrolux 14 Loveland
Here’s how “Turistas” should have worked. Let’s use that classic “Hostel,” another slasher picture about tourists hacked up by foreigners who hate Americans, as the model.
A pack of good-looking young Americans (and a couple of Brits) are waylaid in a remote corner of the world. They don’t speak the language. And their paranoia rises as they confront what appears to be a larger and larger conspiracy aimed at picking them off, one by one, doomed to a fate they cannot guess.
Director John Stockwell, not exactly an old hand at horror (“Crazy/Beautiful,” “Blue Crush,” “Into the Blue”), tampers with that formula, at his own peril. He starts with a graphic scene of unanesthetized surgery, tipping us to the finale. Ten minutes in, he has the villain “explain” his motivations to his henchmen.
And rather than leaving his victims utterly lost and in the dark, he has one character, an Australian beauty (Melissa George) speak Portuguese. So when a Brazilian bus carrying herself and the others (Josh Duhamel of “Las Vegas,” Olivia Wilde of “The O.C.,” Beau Garrett, Desmond Askew and Max Brown) wrecks in the middle of “paradise,” she, at least, can interpret some of what the folks who proceed to trap them are doing.
Still, even though we know where the movie is going before the victims do, there’s still room for suspense as we wait to see who figures it out; who fights back; and who survives.
“Turistas” is all about the ick factor, the grossness of the violence to their bodies. Who will survive?
But if we’ve read the credits, we kind of know that, don’t we? | Only registered users can write comments.
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