* and a half - Release Date: Oct 25, 2002
A single compliment spewed from Thandie Newton's lips made every person in the theater simultaneously groan and roll their eyes in frustration: "Do you know what's wrong with you? Absolutely nothing."
It wasn't the quote itself that everyone found so appalling - it was the total lack of chemistry between Newton ("Mission: Impossible II") and Mark Wahlberg ("The Planet of the Apes") who star in "The Truth About Charlie." "Charlie" is a remake of the acclaimed 1963 Stanley Dolen film "Charade," starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. For the record, Newton is incorrect, because there is absolutely something wrong with the film.
Regina Lambert (Newton) returns to her Paris flat after a short vacation to find everything, including her husband Charlie, missing. To make matters worse, the police inform Regina that Charlie, who recently stole $6 million, has been murdered.
She then meets up with the mysterious Joshua Peters (Wahlberg), three of Charlie's compatriots, and a lone FBI agent, each of them believing Regina knows the location of the stolen money. Not knowing whom to trust, she begins a desperate struggle to discover exactly what happened to Charlie and the stolen money.
Director Jonathan Demme, who hasn't made a successful movie since his 1993 Academy Award-winning "Philadelphia," continues to churn out the most tepid of films. What lacks in his screenplay and actors' performances, he attempts to make up for in his directing and cinematography. With his longtime cinematographer Tak Fujimoto ("The Sixth Sense"), there is a familiar grace throughout "Charlie." However, it doesn't fit, almost as if the duo's talents are too good for the film.
While there are some beautiful landscape shots, Demme fails to take advantage of the beautiful sights Paris has to offer. Many shots are used as transition sequences between scenes and are never incorporated into the heart of the film.
Demme uses his trademark interview shots (think Hannibal and Clarice of "The Silence of the Lambs") to try and grasp the attention of the audience through constant eye contact. In addition, a majority of the shots in "Charlie" are done with steadicam (a handheld camera technique), which are used to give the viewers a more personal look into the events happening on screen. However, neither one of Demme's methods are gripping enough to eclipse the lifeless performances given by Newton and Wahlberg.
"Charlie" feels like an experiment run by Demme, similar to Steven Soderbergh's "Full Frontal" in some ways: it focuses on what he can get away with artistically as a director, instead of focusing on an intelligent plot and acting. If Demme took more time working on Newton and Wahlberg's acting instead of trying to fit oddities such as singer Charles Aznavur into the film, "Charlie" could have been better by leaps and bounds.
Filling the shoes of Hollywood icons Hepburn and Grant is no easy task, and neither Newton nor Wahlberg is expected to do so. Even with this heavy burden lifted off their shoulders, both of them manage to give the worst performances humanly possible.
Newton is anything but convincing as a woman with the urge to take on a murder mystery on her own. Her blatant lack of drive as Regina makes her character wander around the streets of Paris aimlessly. When in contact with others, she becomes a sniveling child begging for help. Her total lack of screen presence is a slap in the face for Newton, and Wahlberg doesn't do any better himself.
It's obvious that Wahlberg isn't fluent in French, but the question is whether he is fluent in English. There isn't a shred of emotion in any of his lines, especially the ones involving Newton, which sound like he is reading off cue cards. With an invisible Newton and a passionless Wahlberg, there is no question why the two actors, not to mention the film as a whole, don't click.
Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
