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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Film Review: Mortdecai
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Film Review: Mortdecai

An over-the-top detective film that is missing real wit

Johnny Depp in the film.Premium
Johnny Depp in the film.

Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) loves his newly cultivated and nurtured moustache. His wife Joanna’s (Gwyneth Paltrow’s) reaction to it is to move out to the guest room and refuse to get intimate with Mortdecai. He fears the issue may rip apart his marriage, but he is partial to his moustache, not least because it is one of the last symbols of the fading importance of the British aristocracy.

In between a marital tussle over whiskers, the roguish Mortdecai, who is also a notorious art dealer, is enlisted by a police inspector (Ewan McGregor) to help them track down a valuable stolen painting. The painting is not a masterpiece in itself but is rumoured to house the code to a lost bank account filled with Nazi riches.

After an art restorer is found murdered in her studio and the Francisco de Goya piece she was working on is noted as missing, Mortdecai, broke and in debt, finds himself chasing the painting or being chased by art thieves from London to Moscow to California.

In the US, he expresses shock at the American ways and finds himself bowing to the seductive advances of an heiress (Olivia Munn), daughter of a collector (Jeff Goldblum) who could hold the key to the location of the Goya painting. Accompanying Mortdecai as his “manservant" and bodyguard is the loyal, unquestioning Jock (Paul Bettany).

Joanna too chips in, conducting a parallel investigation which brings them close to solving the mystery and reunites the tussling couple as they orchestrate a grand charade of their own.

Adapted from the book anthology The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli and directed by David Koepp (Ghost Town, Premium Rush), action-comedy Mortdecai offers a stellar ensemble cast, albeit largely squandered, impressive production design, and an inexplicably and deliberately over-the-top style.

Depp leads the charge and is perhaps at his worst—mashing up every slurring, drunken character he has ever played, only dressing up better. The actors employ silly accents hoping they will compensate for the dearth of any real wit in the script. And when all else fails, there are always the moustache jokes.

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Published: 23 Jan 2015, 06:06 PM IST
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