**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Thandie Newton, Mark Wahlberg, Tim Robbins, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Ted Levine, Christine Boisson, and Joong-Hoon Park
Directed by Jonathan Demme & written by Demme, Steve Schmidt, Peter Joshua, and Jessica Bendinger, based on the motion picture screenplay “Charade” by Peter Stone
2002 PG13
The original “Charade,” directed by Stanley Donen in 1963, is an excellent film and an absolute confection. Its brilliance comes not so much from its ingredients—a spy story, a damsel alone and in distress in the big city, aided by a handsome stranger, a romance under strain, wisecracks under the lights of Paris—but because like a master chef it sprinkles its ingredients in just the right proportions, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn as its salt and pepper shakers. Because “Charade” is assembled from dozens of espionage conventions that have been coagulating since the birth of cinema and back into the works of Joseph Conrad, there’s really nothing wrong with remaking it. “The Truth About Charlie,” directed by Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”), is a valiant effort mostly in the same light-hearted vein as the original. Thandie Newton (“Mission: Impossible 2”) gives a splendid performance, the rich cinematography makes the sky and pavement look likes it’s always just rained, and Demme treats us to some clever camerawork. But it’s also an effort mired by spots that are unnecessarily weighty or unclear.
Like in the original, an unsatisfied young wife (Thandie Newton) comes home to Paris from a vacation to find that her husband has sold all their possessions and been murdered on a train. It seems he hasn’t been telling her everything, and the police show her oodles of phony passports with his picture in them. As if her husband’s secret life wasn’t distressing enough, it seems that her late husband Charlie was hiding six million dollars in loot stolen from somewhere, attracting the attention of three shady characters, all claiming the money as theirs. Like the original, the three toughs are brilliantly realized caricatures of tough-talking sleaze. Joong-Hoon Park projects quiet, contained menace, Lisa Gay Hamilton, at all of five foot one, is vicious, almost playfully aggressive, and Ted Levine (the despicable Buffalo Bill from “The Silence of the Lambs”) is given a few scenes of over-the-top brutishness, in which his tuba-deep voice is used to great effect.
Helping Newton negotiate the swine and the stolen loot are the handsome stranger (Mark Wahlberg) and a bookish CIA administrator (the very tall Tim Robbins; Newton, who’s built like a marionette, comes up to about his elbow). The handsome stranger was originally played by Cary Grant; Marky Mark wisely chooses to not even try to be as charming, and instead adopts the demeanor of a soft-spoken nice guy who may not be what he seems. Robbins is even more soft-spoken and, like in the original, is constantly apologizing to Newton about the inconvenience of the entire murder-money affair. Like a good Agatha Christie story, murder in “Charade” is treated more like an affront to good manners than anything truly shocking. Robbins’ scenes in “The Truth About Charlie” are the most adept at duplicating this effect.
Newton and Wahlberg share an instant attraction that grows as they trade quips and play cat-and-mouse with the thugs, the police, and each other. Marky Mark is no Cary Grant, but Newton’s performance is cute to the point of being edible. She falls down twice in the movie, projects fear, charm, vulnerability, and intelligence, all in the precise way the material needs.
All these elements make for what could have been one of the funniest comedies of the year. Demme’s rotating camera plays well in Marky Mark’s initial flirtation with Thandie Newton, there’s a funny corpse point-of-view in the morgue, and the conversations in which the characters try their best to fumble over the plot while looking directly at us are also amusing. But what’s a dead-serious hostage situation doing in this movie? Why is a plot so cunning and direct made so murky and difficult to follow? And why are important revelations played sotto voce, where I found myself straining to hear what was happening beneath the music? “The Truth About Charlie” is too loose with its plot, not just because “Charade” is tighter, but because “Charlie’s” lighter moments are too buoyant and fun-loving for the plodding that comes after them.
I’m reminded of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” from earlier this year, in which Nia Vardolas gave a teddy bear-lovable performance in a movie that was simpler than her performance deserved. Here Newton is equally delightful, amidst cheerful synth-pop and endless drum beats, but we could have enjoyed her more if there were a little bit less going on around her.
WHAT MY DAMN WIFE THINKS: “’Charade’ is a four-star wonderful film. Completely light and enjoyable, yet with moments of tension, its plot is woven tightly, and all the twists and turns lead to a resolution. ‘The Truth About Charlie,’ while having the appropriate spirit and tone, has taken ‘Charade’s’ ball of yarn and unraveled some ends, then taken some of those ends, and inexplicably tied them to some other balls of yarn. Three stars.”
P.S. One of the screenwriters for “The Truth About Charlie” is named Peter Joshua; Cary Grant’s character in the original is also Peter Joshua, and Marky Mark’s character in the remake is Joshua Peters. Not surprisingly, the Internet Movie Database claims that this writer so-called Peter Joshua is none other than Peter Stone, the writer of the original “Charade.” What a tangled web we weave.
Copyright (c) 2002 Friday & Saturday Night