Johnny Depp plays a man who is both a swindler and an art dealer in Mortdecai, and the film spends nearly two hours trying to make us care about that distinction. The movie, directed by David Koepp and written by Eric Aronson, is adapted from the 1972 novel Don’t Point That Thing at Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli. It stars Depp as Lord Charlie Mortdecai, a man under crushing tax debt who chases a stolen Goya painting he believes holds a code leading to hidden Nazi gold. Gwyneth Paltrow plays his wife Johanna, Ewan McGregor is Inspector Alistair Martland, Paul Bettany is Jock Strapp, and Olivia Munn appears as Georgina Krampf.
The premise sounds like a setup for a clever caper. It is not. Mortdecai is a mess of a film, one that wastes its cast and its concept on a script that cannot decide whether it wants to be a comedy, an adventure, or a straight thriller. It is none of those things well, and the result is a movie that feels less like a crime story and more like a series of disconnected sketches tied together with Scotch tape.
Trailer, via Lionsgate Movies.
The Case Against Mortdecai
The film’s central problem is its lead. Depp plays Mortdecai as a blithe, almost cartoonish aristocrat, and the performance leans heavily on eccentricity rather than wit. He is charming in a way that is meant to disarm, but charm is not enough to carry a two-hour adventure about stolen paintings and Nazi gold. The character is supposed to be clever, but he spends most of the film reacting to events rather than driving them. His wife Johanna is smarter, more capable, and more interesting, and the film seems to know it.
The supporting cast fares no better. Ewan McGregor’s Inspector Martland is a stock romantic foil who spends the entire film in love with Johanna, a crush that is never developed beyond a few lines of dialogue. Paul Bettany’s Jock Strapp is a faithful manservant who gets shot in the leg early in the film and spends the rest of the movie being dragged around. Olivia Munn’s Georgina Krampf is barely more than a party girl whose father, Milton Krampf, is played by Jeff Goldblum. Goldblum is a great actor, but he is given nothing to do here beyond being a wealthy collector with a party to throw.
The villains fare even worse. Ulrich Thomsen’s Romanov is a Russian thug who kidnaps Mortdecai and threatens torture, but the threat is never delivered. Paul Whitehouse’s Spinoza is a minor character who dies in a hail of gunfire, and his death is barely mentioned again. Alec Utgoff’s Dmitri and Guy Burnet’s Maurice appear briefly as henchmen. None of them feel like threats, and none of them feel like people.
The Plot That Doesn’t Add Up
The plot itself is a disaster. Mortdecai is chasing a Goya painting because he owes money, but the film never explains why the painting is valuable except that it conceals a code. The code leads to Nazi gold, but the film never explains how that gold is relevant to his debt. The theft of the painting in Oxford kills an art restorer, but the film never follows up on the investigation. Inspector Martland is put on the case, but the film never gives him anything to do beyond asking Mortdecai for help.
The film also introduces a Duke who knows the thief and says the painting conceals the location of a hoard of Nazi gold, but the Duke disappears after that scene. Mortdecai is then kidnapped by Romanov, who threatens torture unless he surrenders the painting. He escapes through a window with Jock, but the escape is over before it begins. Mortdecai is sent to America to meet with Milton Krampf, and it is only there that the film finally reveals that the Goya was smuggled into the US in Mortdecai’s own beloved Rolls-Royce after it had been stolen from Strago and stashed there.
None of this adds up to a coherent story. It is a collection of set pieces — a kidnapping, a chase, a party — strung together with a threadbare premise. The film expects the audience to care about the painting because the film cares about it, but the film never explains why the painting matters. The Nazi gold is a McGuffin, and a bad one.
The Chase Through Los Angeles
The climax takes place at Krampf’s party, where Mortdecai and Jock try to steal the Goya while Krampf’s guests watch. The sequence is meant to be tense, but it is undercut by the fact that the film has spent so long telling us that Mortdecai is clever and brave. By the time he reaches for the painting, we have forgotten why we should care. The film ends with the painting recovered, the debt paid, and the villains vanquished, but the ending feels hollow because the journey there was so thin.
The film is also full of holes. Mortdecai is kidnapped by Romanov, who threatens torture, but the film never shows the torture. Mortdecai escapes through a window with Jock, but the film never explains how. The Goya is smuggled into the US in Mortdecai’s Rolls-Royce, but the film never explains how it got there. These are not small details; they are the bones of the story, and the film leaves them unexplained.
The film also suffers from pacing problems. It moves slowly in the middle, with stretches where nothing happens except people talking past each other. The action sequences, when they arrive, are poorly staged and badly edited. The film is at its best when it is at its most chaotic, but that chaos is the result of poor direction rather than any kind of artistic vision.
What Went Wrong
There are several reasons Mortdecai failed. Here is a ranking of the biggest problems:
- The plot is a jumble of ideas that never cohere into a story.
- The characters are thinly drawn and less interesting than the actors playing them.
- The pacing drags in the middle, losing the audience’s attention.
- The action sequences are poorly staged and badly edited.
- The film never explains why the Nazi gold matters or how the Goya got to the US.
Each of these factors worked against the film on its own. Together, they made Mortdecai a disaster.
The Legacy of a Flop
Mortdecai was released by Lionsgate on January 23, 2015. It grossed $47.3 million against an estimated $60 million budget. That is a failure by any measure. The film was also critically panned, earning a low score from critics.
The failure is not surprising. The film was marketed as a family-friendly adventure, but it has none of the energy of a franchise like National Treasure. It is too dark to be a comedy, too light to be a thriller, and too unfocused to be either. The film is a mess, and it is a mess that no one wanted to see.
The Verdict
Mortdecai is a failure. It is a failure of ambition, a failure of execution, and a failure of imagination. It is a film that took a good premise and wasted it on a script that could not hold together. It is a film that took a talented cast and gave them nothing to work with. It is a film that took a chance and lost it.
The film is not worth seeing. It is not worth renting. It is not worth thinking about. It is a waste of time, a waste of talent, and a waste of money. The film is a failure, and it deserves to be forgotten.
The score is low.
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