TURISTAS Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Fox Atomic
Grade: B-
Directed by: John Stockwell
Written By: Michael Arlen Ross
Cast: John Duhamel, Melissa Geroge, Olivia Wilde, Desmond
Askew, Beau Garrett, Max Brown, Agles Steib, Miguel Lunardi
Screened at: Broadway, NYC, 11/20/06
Opens: December 1, 2006 They say that when you travel, the journey is important, not the
destination. A group of young people doing some eco-travel in
the jungles of Brazil might disagree. The film opens with a
foreshadowing of what's to come. A woman has apparently
had enough journeying and is saying, "I want to go home" Who
can blame her? She's hanging upside down with needles in her
arm, blood carousing through tubes. This is the kind of scene
we've come to expect with a genre of films known by some as
horror flicks and by others as slasher films. "Turistas" is about a
group of tourists who wish that they all they had was a case of
turista. Instead, blood is about to flow from the bodies of some
of the unlucky ones while, true to the genre, others escape
(especially if they are handsome). The one aspect of the movie that's new is that Fox Atomic,
which introduces itself to its audience with its first picture, claims
that this is the first U.S.-made film photographed entirely in
Brazil. We'll take their word for it. Enrique Chediak has
captured some stunning scenes from that large and beautiful
country, including a pristine beach, a lush jungle that all but
makes the audience feel the heat and humidity, and especially
crystal-clear waters and underground caverns which the young,
troubled people must navigate in order to escape a disastrous
fate. Aside from these factors, "Turistas" is generic–some saying it
follows the path of Eli Roth's film, "Hostel," released earlier this
year, about three buddies on a European vacation who
backpack to a small Slovakian village looking for sex and drugs
but encountering violence and blood. However, "Turistas" is not
as gory, even underplaying the torture that one hapless woman
goes through while a mad doctor removes her organs. The story opens on a bus dashing madly about a twisting road
while Alex (Josh Duhamel) is put down by some fellow tourists
as a scaredy-cat for yelling to the driver to slow down. When
the bus, carrying a selection of tourists from disparate parts of
the world and locals as well predictably goes out of control,
tumbling down a cliff, Alex takes on the de facto job of
commanding his sister Bea (Olivia Wilde), her friend Amy (Beau
Garrett), an Australian beauty named Pru (Melissa George), and
a couple of Brits, Finn and Liam (Desmond Askew, Max Brown).
Stopping for beers in an unlikely refreshment stand they come
upon as they hike in a remote area, they all fall asleep, drugged
presumably by a local, Kiko (Agles Steib), who says he wants
only to practice his English. Kiko leads them to a shack that has
no road, making the gang wonder how anyone who lives there
can travel any distance. They are to discover that the resident
evil Zamora (Michael Lunardi), who has joined the anti-West
club, has political reasons of his own to detain whom he
considers the gringos who exploit poor countries, allegedly
kidnapping children for their organs. He aims to level the
playing field. John Stockwell, who directs "Turistas," has the resume for the
job of getting underwater shots, having made "Into the Blue"
(divers in trouble with a drug lord) and "Blue Crush" (woman
dreams of winning a surfing competition in Hawaii). With
scripter Michael Arlen Ross's debut screenplay, he plays up
Brazil as a tourist paradise with its contrast of beaches and
jungles while at the same time noting that things can sometimes
get hairy. The actors are almost uniformly good-looking, their
adolescent fantasies credible. But for me, too much of the
picture has been photographed in the dark, protecting us from
seeing much of anything that's gruesome, and "Turistas" suffers
from a lack of originality. Rated R. 89 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online | 
