Plot: When a man wakes up with amnesia in an Australian hospital, he must use what few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him. In the first scene, the protagonist is driving through the outback pursued by a truck whose driver is trying to run him off the road.
Review: Have you recently watched a trailer and wondered if the production being advertised was a film or television series? That seems to be a sign that we are reaching peak television. With the quality of small-screen productions increasing over the last ten years thanks to so many streaming platforms, it has become almost impossible to keep track of every show hitting the airwaves, let alone which app you need to watch it. The focus on limited and event series has almost transformed a lot of scripts that would have worked as feature films and expanded them to multi-episode endeavors. For better or worse, we now have to endure six to ten hours of what would have otherwise been a ninety-minute movie. HBO Max’s latest original; The Tourist, is a prime example of a story that could have worked as a film but instead stretches itself just a little too far.
Before you discount this as a negative review, I will say that I liked The Tourist quite a bit. Clocking in at six episodes, it is about two hours too long to maintain the quality of the story and its momentum, but even taken as a whole it is still a very entertaining watch. Written by Harry and Jack Williams (Rellik, The Missing), The Tourist has a pretty simple concept: a man (known as The Man) is traveling in the Australian outback when he is pursued by a large truck. The truck runs him off the road and the next thing he knows, he is in a hospital with no memory of who he is or why he was on that highway. Like a blend of Steven Spielberg’s Duel and Christopher Nolan’s Memento, The Tourist gives us a core group of characters who are all invested in discovering who The Man is and what happened to him.
Jamie Dornan portrays The Man. After Fifty Shades of Grey, I wanted to discount Dornan as an actor, but he has had a nice run of performances in recent years. From Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar and Belfast, Dornan has shown he is more than capable of acting in any sort of role. Here, he gives a somewhat understated and believable performance as a man who doesn’t know who he is. Dornan is complemented by Danielle Macdonald (Patti Cake$) as probationary officer Helen Chambers. Macdonald is a great comedic actress but should not be discounted in serious roles either. Here, she is intrigued by The Man’s plight and decides to help him. The cast also includes Shalom Brune-Franklin as Luci and Olafur Darri Olafsson as the cowboy hat-wearing Billy. All four of these actors work well together on screen and in the early episodes, they are the primary focus.
Where The Tourist begins to lose traction comes in the middle of the series as several red herrings and misdirects are thrown in to keep the plot stretched for a six-episode run. At times, these blatant attempts to prolong the story can be ignored while others bog down the momentum. Once the twist of who, how, and why The Man was on that road gets revealed, The Tourist has already transformed from a taut thriller into a more conventional crime story. The introduction of Damon Herriman and Alex Dimitriades complicate the narrative and while the whole cast here is good, the story begins to stretch its logical limits.
Directing duties on The Tourist were split evenly between Chris Sweeney (Liar) and Daniel Nettheim (Line of Duty), both of whom use genre conventions and the beautifully stark Australian landscape to great effect. They also hone in on the fact that The Man, not knowing whether he was a good or bad person, has the chance to change his ways. Despite the requisite penultimate flashback episode, this series does keep things moving along despite many of the directions it goes in requiring backtracking to stay on the main narrative. Thankfully, being only six episodes means you don’t have to endure too much of this, but it does make me question whether this could have been a two-hour movie with all of the fat trimmed off.
While you never know if a series like this will get a second season, I am approaching The Tourist as if it were a limited series. As it stands, there is more than enough here to earn a spot in your viewing regimen. I like the visual style brought by cinematographers Geoffrey Hall and Ben Wheeler as well as the unforgiving editing by Emma Oxley, Charlene Short, and Mark Keady. Jamie Dornan gives one of his best performances to date and Danielle Macdonald showcases why she needs more roles. Overall, I don’t think anyone will be disappointed with The Tourist and it may actually surprise some people. There is nothing here you haven’t seen before but it is delivered in an entertaining package.
The Tourist premieres on March 3rd on HBO Max.