Much was made recently of Kazakhstan being so concerned about their perceived public relations fiasco at the hands of one Sacha Baron Cohen, a.k.a. Borat, that they ran TV and newspaper ads promoting their country in a positive light. I'm guessing they feared that foreigners -- read Americans -- would be foolish enough to believe that Cohen's comedy creation and depiction of their people and culture was real.
Okay, maybe that was somewhat justified considering how gullible and/or dim some people can be. Yet, we don't see Brazil getting up in arms over their depiction in "Turistas." Of course, maybe that has something to do with it being a horror thriller rather than a comedy.
Then again, I don't remember seeing drugging, abduction and/or live organ removal in any tourist brochures for the country. Yes, we get all of that plus the usual horror film conventions -- including scantly clad nubile bodies -- in this first offering from 20th Century Fox's new specialty division, Fox Atomic.
Taking some of its plotline from "Dirty Pretty Things" (as well as a particular urban legend) but jettisoning the good acting, writing and direction, the film is essentially just a gussied up slasher flick. A slightly disparate group of party-seekers (Americans, Brits, an Aussie and some Swedes) arrive in Brazil, barely survive a bus accident, get duped by the locals, and must then avoid a deranged doc whose interest in organs doesn't involve any Wurlitzers.
We know this from the get-go where the opening credits show the usual flash image array of bloody savagery along with the reflection of our resident villain -- Miguel Lunardi -- in the eyeball of one of his "patients." When we see him later acting like a normal doc for the locals, there's no doubt about what he's up to, especially when he skewers a subordinate in a rather eye-opening sequences designed - natch - to show us just how ruthless a villain he is.
In fact, the film -- like 99.9% of its predecessors -- offers no surprises. Scantly clad young folk automatically means they'll be fodder for the great cinematic grinder, and the only "mystery," as usual, is in who will meet their demise and in what order.
The problem -- akin to most entries in the genre -- is that we don't care about any of them, despite director John Stockwell and writer Michael Ross taking their time getting to the meat of the story. And in keeping with genre tradition, the film is filled with illogical material, the main one being the villains' modus operandi.
Since most everyone's in on the ruse of drugging the "gringos" so that Dr. Wurlitzer, uh Zamora, can play with their organs, it would seem logical that once the kids have been drugged, they'd be transported immediately to the "O.R." Instead, the story has one of the local confederates -- Agles Steib -- take the victims on an arduous, cross- jungle journey to their eventual place of destiny.
That's done not only to pad out the story, but also supposedly to give us more time to get to know the characters (blandly embodied by the likes of Josh Duhamel, Melissa George, Desmond Askew and others), just like Kiko who eventually has a change of heart now that these tourists are his less than 24-hour-old friends. Nevertheless, he delivers them to his master and then the "fun" begins, in full, surgically graphic glory. Yet, rather than narrating the organ removal surgery as might occur on one of those health-based cable channels, our doc delivers a calm diatribe about how foreigners have ravaged his country and people, so he's now doing the same back to them.
Of course, some of them manage to escape, leading to various incidents of cat and mouse material, including a prolonged pursuit sequence in some underwater caves. That might have worked okay, but Stockwell bungles the direction, confusing quick edits and hard to discern footage with dark claustrophobia. Continuing his trend from "Blue Crush," however, he doesn't have any problems showing those shapely bodies (in barely-there swim attire) in all of their glory.
Had the film been better in delivering memorable thrills and chills, perhaps Brazil might have had something to worry about. As it stands, it's just another occasionally effective but otherwise unremarkable slasher style flick that's briefly visiting theaters before permanently moving onto video store back shelves and late night cable channels. "Turistas" rates as a 4 out of 10.
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