Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin) and The Man (Jamie Dornan) in The Tourist.
We’re deep in Australia’s sunburnt country,thick with the kind of brown dust and muted colours you find in westerns. A land of long highways and not much else,that stretches from the miserable present into the hopeless distance and beyond. ButThe Tourist also swerves into an almost David Lynch-esque other-world,one which delights as much as it disturbs.
This is no garden-variety outback thriller. You’re immediately reminded that this story comes from the pens of Harry and Jack Williams,who tend to write television thrillers like Kasparov plays chess. They madeThe Missing,which was as deeply disturbing as it was hold-your-breath compelling. And they madeits magnificent sequelBaptiste.
Who is Dornan’s “the man”? And more importantly,who wants him dead?
From the start we are strapped into the passenger seat of Jamie Dornan’s character’s life. I’d tell you his name,but I don’t know it. He doesn’t know it either. He certainly did at one point but when he wakes up in hospital,he has no memory of who he is,or why he is where he is.
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And with thatThe Tourist sets up a beautiful mystery:thrilling,breathtakingly simple but still densely complex. And given the circumstances which set up this predicament,it quickly becomes clear that this is about more than simply finding out who “the man” is. It’s also about who wants him dead.
As the man begins a slow walk back through his life,we meet a menagerie of eccentric characters who populate this desolate but texturally rich space:the likeable probationary officer Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald),the waitress Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin),who inadvertently saves him from what feels like a second hit,and landlady Sue (Genevieve Lemon),who puts a roof over his head. Olafur Darri Olafsson shows up,with a whiff of “bad guy” about him,and future episodes promise to bring actors Alex Dimitriades and Damon Herriman into the frame.