Turistas
|
STARS: Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, Desmond Askew, Max Brown DIRECTOR: John Stockwell [2/5] When Fergie from Black Eyed Peas went shopping for the perfect accessory to go with her just-kicked-meth eyebrow piercing, she wound up with clean-cut Josh Duhamel, who stars in this run-of-the-mill thriller from director John Stockwell (Blue Crush, Into The Blue). On vacation in Brazil with his little sister Bea (Wilde) and her hot friend Amy (Garrett), Alex survives a bus accident in which he and his companions meet an Australian girl (George) and a pair of Brits (Askew and Brown), who all wait for the next bus at a beach-front bar where they wake up face-down in the sand the next morning with no money, no passports and no way out of the jungle. What ensues is one long, vaguely racist (all the bad guys are brown or black; the one person who tries to help them is-shocker-white) chase scene in which the tourists are hunted by thugs hired by an angry surgeon who wants to harvest the gringos' livers and kidneys to give to organ-bereft Brazilian youth. As a movie, Turistas is beyond typical, relying largely on its exotic locale and scantily clad and/or topless teens to sell tickets. As a metaphor for the West's involvement in places it shouldn't be (i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan), it's a home run. -J. Bennett |
