So Cary grant and Audrey Hepburn are unfortunately dead. That means director Jonathan Demme (`Silence of the Lambs') must find suitable replacements for his remake of `Charade' called `The Truth about Charlie.' Will Smith was his first choice-Mark Wahlberg (`Planet of the Apes') took the Grant role. Thandi Newton (`Mission Impossible 2') plays Hepburn's role. Neither carries the film, which requires a certain amount of international sophistication and charm.
Set in Paris, `The Truth about Charlie' starts with a murder and the victim's money, which everyone seems to want. It has touches of the old American love of Paris, e.g., the tower appears regularly. But it is a more modern Paris than the original film's: Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (`Signs' `The Silence of the Lambs') said, `We wanted to make the city feel mysterious and scary. We wanted it overcast and gray-different from the traditional view of Paris, more realistic, more paranoid.'
A Ferris-wheel scene with Wahlberg and Tim Robbins, who reprises the Walter Matthau role, evokes the mystery and danger of Sir Carol Reed's `Third Man.' That most American of images, the incarcerated Hannibal Lecter, ends the film with a fitting tribute to his invulnerability.
Back to Wahlberg and Newton. The success of the film, then and now, rests with the leads, and they failed. Wahlberg is flat, expressionless, 2 dimensional. Newton lacks the acting chops to navigate the aftershocks of a husband's murder and the barrage of interest in his money, hidden somewhere in plain sight. Robbins comes closest to a screen presence, part mountebank, part protector, and part enigma.
The original title `Charade' better expresses the delicious ambiguity of European intrigue where nothing is as it seems, and people are not what they appear. In this regard, `Charlie' fulfills the promise. For a modern look, it also succeeds.
But in an overall comparison between the 2 films, `Charlie' is the imposter-no ambiguity intended.
