"The Tourist."
After seeing the trailer in March, I finally gave it the Two Episode Test. And yes, it definitely passed. A look at what's going on in this HBO Max odd thriller.
The trailer for “The Tourist” is one of those compellingly simple executions you dream about — it’s action-packed, intriguing and, with its best trick, tells you what the series is likely about without telling you what happens, a real miracle among trailers.
When I first saw it I said one word: “Yep.” Then wrote it down to watch later. As it turns out, that trailer is essentially the first 8:32 of the first episode and manages to be both an homage to “Duel,” (the 1971 full length feature debut of one Steven Spielberg) and its own thing entirely. Yes, you still get credit for expertly setting the hook even if we’ve kinda sorta seen this thing before: A lone man in a remote location (in this instance, the Australian Outback), driving a tiny car in the vast, hot, dusty roads when, out of. nowhere, a semi-truck seems hellbent on slamming into him and killing him.
So your brain, just like the brain of the character in the car, aka, The Man (Jamie Dornan), is thinking mostly the same thing: “What the fuck?” It’s not a spoiler — because it’s the crux of the story — to tell you that this nightmare scenario from out of nowhere has a successful end, chasing and crashing into the car, sending it rolling multiple times and leaving the person inside, who happens to have a pretty thick Irish accent, left for dead in the Outback. He wakes up in a hospital with no memory of who he is, no ID, nothing. Complete blank.
I hope you, as I did, will immediately rub your hands together and think, “OK, then. What are they on about here?”
A lot, as it turns out. But the beauty for our non-spoiler purposes is that I only watched two episodes — I mean, it’s a Two Episode Test, people. (Though, by the time you read this I will have no doubt gobbled up more). It’s a limited series. There’s only six episodes.
What struck and impressed me immediately is the languid pace — a difficult task to pull off when you know you’ve only got so much time to tell what’s clearly going to be a complicated story. The first episode in particular is masterful at restraint. The audience knows that this person, whoever he is, is something of a fish out of water. In the middle of nowhere in the Australian Outback is no place to be if you’re…alone. Dornan (“Belfast,” “The Fall” and, yes, the “Fifty Shades” movies) isn’t some meek accountant, though. He’s got the build and the beard to fit right in the harsh, aggro Australian culture, even if the accent is the fun part of the first clue.
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