Mortdecai, Review: Mortal art

Directed by David Koepp and written by Eric Aronson (who co-wrote 2001’s On the Line, which nobody wants to remember), the film is inspired by the books of Kyril Bonfiglioli. Bonfiglioli died in his late-fifties, in 1985. After attending Oxford, he worked as an art dealer. He described himself as "a marrier of beautiful women and a fair shot with most weapons". He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and left a fifth unfinished, which was completed by Craig Brown, the celebrated satirist and parodist, and was called The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery. His book, Don’t Point That Thing at Me, is the basis of Mortdecai, the film. The ‘thing’, apparently, is his moustache. This is Koepp’s second pairing with Johnny Depp, the first being Secret Window, released over a decade ago.

Mortdecai’s story starts with the art dealer/art con man facing bankruptcy unless he can pay £8 mn in government taxes, and follows him from adventure to misadventure, via Jersey and Moscow, tackling, en route, a Chinese collector bent on revenge, an unhealthy sprinkling of well-seasoned academics, a garage operator who is also an art smuggler, an MI5 agent who is secretly in love with Mortdecai’s wife, Russian agents, a Middle Eastern terrorist, a shady American art smuggler with a nymphomaniac daughter, all this to recover a stolen Goya painting, rumoured to contain a code that leads to lost Nazi gold.

Writer-director Koepp has adapted several novels for film, including Richard Matheson’s Stir of Echoes and Stephen King’s Secret Window (both of which he also directed), and his last novel-based movie was Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Over the course of his career, he has written the scripts for films like Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Mission: Impossible, Carlito's Way, Snake Eyes, and Mr. Hughes. With such impeccable credentials, a lot was expected from him. What we have is a strange concoction of crime, espionage, comedy, swashbuckling, martial arts adventure, a lot of play on words, generous doses of off-colour humour and a style that is irreverent to the point of being offensive. Change of locale is established by showing graphics of a plane sweeping across cities and countries, identified by big, bold letters. Not very original, you might feel, but Koepp packs a punch towards the end, when the plane flies into the name, breaking it into pieces. Strained, to say the least.

As a name, the closest I had come to Mortdecai was Yitzhak Mordechai, the Israeli minister. (A fellow film-critic asked me before the screening, “How do you pronounce the name?”) And coming to Bonfiglioli, nothing comes close. Talking of names, in a funny scene, Mordecai refers to his Russian stalker by several different names, all of them common Russian monikers, in a matter of minutes. Johnny Depp (Transcendence, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lone Ranger) has a penchant for nasal, unclear speech, delivered with a stiff upper lip. When used in moderation, this can be an asset. Let it loose, as in this film, and it becomes boring and annoying. Firstly, half the humour is lost because you cannot hear what he is saying. Secondly, anybody who talks in this manner will not be able to sustain the interest of listeners. He is obviously enjoying himself to the hilt. Viewers, on the other hand, are highly unlikely to enjoy his antics at the same level.

Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man, The Avengers, Contagion) as Depp’s wife who is mortified on discovering that he has grown a moustache and who flirts with a lawman just to extract vital information, has a meaty role and acquits herself well. Ewan McGregor (The Ghost-Writer, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, August: Osage County) is the MI5 man who has to balance duty with an opportunities to get closer to his muse and he is well-cast. Paul Bettany (Iron Man, The Avengers, Transcendence) as Jock Strapp, Mortdecai’s man Friday-cum-trouble shooter-cum Harold ‘Oddjob’ Sakata (Goldfinger), cum sex maniac has a whale of as time, though no explanation is given for his blind devotion to his master, even if it means dying for him. Olivia Munn (The Baby-Makers, Magic Mike, Freeloaders) plays the nymphomaniac, Georgina, and is sure to make male viewers hope that they bump into her soon. Jeff Goldblum as Georgina’s father Krampf and Paul Whitehouse as the garage-owner Spinoza provide good support.

Bonfiglioli has been compared to P.G. Wodehouse, and there is some truth in it, particularly the man-servant character, who, minus the fight machine aspects, might remind us of Jeeves. He has also used elements of espionage chronicled by Ian Fleming. Talking of comparisons, one cannot help recall several actors who typified the British upper class on screen: Alec Guinness, Peter O’Toole and late Peter Sellers are names that come to mind right-away. Mortdecai is a part that Peter Sellers would walk into blindfolded. Some parts of Mortdecai are obviously a direct tribute to Sellers' comedies. Perhaps that is why one could get harsh while assessing Mortdecai. Distance yourself, get really objective, and you might not find it too bad after all. Just stay with the laughs.

Men are mortal, art is immortal, so we have heard. What happens when mortals start engaging each other in mortal combat for a piece of art?

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzHT487UX_Y