The Truth about Charlie ½ (2003, Mark Wahlberg, Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins) Classic Movie Review 5349

Co-writer/ director Jonathan Demme’s appalling 2003 movie is a catastrophic remake of the sparkling 1963 thriller Charade, with Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton doing nothing whatever to battle their bizarre miscasting in the old Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn roles. With this talent aboard, its failure is mystifying.

Wahlberg and Newton look like amateurs as they struggle through Demme, Steve Schmidt and Jessica Bendinger’s atrocious, totally reworked script, in which various crooks are after the fortune Newton’s dead hubby Charlie (Stephen Dillane) brought from Vietnam.

The normally good actor Tim Robbins is quite awful in Walter Matthau’s former part as Bartholomew.

Inept on a quite amazing level, The Truth about Charlie inexcusably even looks bad in Tak Fujimoto’s cinematography. Sixties cinema icons Charles Aznavour, Anna Karina, Magali Noël and Agnès Varda are insulted by appearing in this junk.

It is dedicated to the director’s late nephew, Ted Demme, who died on 13 January 2002 of an accidental cocaine induced thrombotic heart attack, aged 38.

Also in the cast are Christine Boisson, Joong-Hoon Park, Ted Levine (a star in Demme’s 1991 masterwork The Silence of the Lambs), Lisa Gay Hamilton, Simon Abkarian, Frédérique Meininger and Françoise Bertin.

It is based on the motion picture Charade and its witty screenplay by Peter Stone.

Demme said: ‘I don’t think it’s sacrilegious to remake any movie, including a good or even great movie. I think what’s sacrilegious is to make a bad movie.’ Remaking Charade turned out to be one of this exceptional film-maker’s only duds, and a bad movie, whereas his 2004 The Manchurian Candidate remake of 1962 The Manchurian Candidate is a success, and a good movie.

Wahlberg obviously agreed with Demme and starred in three Sixties remakes in quick succession: Planet of the Apes (2001), The Truth About Charlie and The Italian Job (2003).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 5349

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