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Here’s how “Turistas” should have worked. Let’s use that classic “Hostel,” another slasher picture about tourists hacked up by foreigners who hate Americans, as the model.
A pack of good-looking young Americans (and a couple of Brits) are waylaid in a remote corner of the world. They don’t speak the language. And their paranoia rises as they confront what appears to be a larger and larger conspiracy aimed at picking them off, one by one, doomed to a fate they cannot guess.
Director John Stockwell, not exactly an old hand at horror (“Crazy/Beautiful,” “Blue Crush,” “Into the Blue”), tampers with that formula, at his own peril. He starts with a graphic scene of unanesthetized surgery, tipping us to the finale. Ten minutes in, he has the villain “explain” his motivations to his henchmen.
And rather than leaving his victims utterly lost and in the dark, he has one character, an Australian beauty (Melissa George) speak Portuguese. So when a Brazilian bus carrying herself and the others (Josh Duhamel of “Las Vegas,” Olivia Wilde of “The O.C.,” Beau Garrett, Desmond Askew and Max Brown) wrecks in the middle of “paradise,” she, at least, can interpret some of what the folks who proceed to trap them are doing.
Still, even though we know where the movie is going before the victims do, there’s still room for suspense as we wait to see who figures it out; who fights back; and who survives. But if we’ve read the credits, we kind of know that, don’t we?
The top-billed guy, Alex (Duhamel), is the one with all the foreboding.
“I just keep thinking how far we must be from a hospital,” he mutters to his sister, the one who got him into this (Wilde). Plainly, he’s the Homebody American, spooked by the very idea of going out into the world.
Then a local bus driver (shades of “Babel”) puts them into the bind that Alex seemed to expect all along, and bad things start happening to undeserving people. A beach party/orgy they stumble into turns ugly when they’re drugged and robbed.
There’s no local help to be had. No cash, no clothes, no passports, not a single luxury. When they start accusing the townsfolk, things turn uglier. And our heroes can’t even guess just how ugly.
“Turistas” is all about the ick factor, the grossness of the violence to their bodies. Who will survive? And will the villain repeat his speech, in English, telling them why they deserve their fate?
Just how xenophobic and anti-Brazilian will Stockwell allow this movie to get?
But as easy as it is to connect with those feelings of being alone and unsafe in some remote corner of the world, Stockwell (working from a script by Michael Arlen Ross) fritters away that universal paranoia at the very beginning. This one is just too obvious, almost from the title.
TURISTAS
1 star (out of 5)
Cast: Josh Duhamel, Olivia Wilde, Melissa George.
Director: John Stockwell.
Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes.
Rating: R, for strong graphic violence and disturbing content, sexuality, nudity, drug use and language.
