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THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE Send This Review to a Friend
When it comes to creative filmmakers director Jonathan Demme is on the side of the angels, but sometimes angels rush in where even fools fear to tread. The idea of remaking "Charade" seems harebrained to begin with. Demme gives it plenty of frenetic, visual flash, but that doesn't solve the problem. It probably compounds it.
The sad truth is that sophistication is more and more a rarity on film. Where is Cary Grant when we need him? Mark Wahlberg is a poor substitute. Where's the wit of Peter Stone, who wrote the screenplay for Charade? Demme, Steve Schmidt, Peter Joshua and Jessica Bendinger have come up with a big screenplay muddle that may leave you wondering what the hell it was all about. Where's the high style of "Charade" director Stanley Donen? Instead we get brashness.
The plot of "Charade" was complex too, but it was so much fun watching Grant and Audrey Hepburn and being swept along in the sophisticated mode. The smartest thing Demme has done is to cast Thandie Newton in the Hepburn role. Newton is no Hepburn, but she's delightful on her own appealing terms, although Wahlberg is so boring in his role that there are absolutely no sparks between them.
When Charlie, the husband of Regina Lambert (Newton) is killed, we're off on a life-threatening, convoluted mystery in which people may not be who they claim to be and poor Regina doesn't know what to believe. The maneuvers take us to Paris, where Demme tries to inject some atmosphere with a pop-up appearance by Charles Aznavour singing in person. Cute but wasted. Demme apparently is trying to recall and honor the French New Wave, emphasized by the overdone hand-held camera style and a reference to Aznavour in a clip from "Shoot the Piano Player." He even names a hotel the Hotel Langlois, suggesting Henri Langlois, the legendary force behind the French Cinemateque.
But such genuflecting doesn't make a flick good. Apart from Wahlberg in this particular role, there's nothing wrong with Demme's casting, which includes Stephen Dillane, Tim Robbins, Joong-Hoon Park, Ted Levine, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Christine Boisson and Sakina Jaffrey. The problem lies in trying to take a model of sophisticated filmmaking and co-opt it into something far less interesting. So much for remakes. A Universal Pictures release.
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