Starring Thandie Newton, Mark Wahlburg, Ted Levine and Tim Robbins

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Produced by Demme, Peter Saraf and Edward Saxon

Screenplay by Demme, Steve Schmidt, Peter Stone and Jessica Bendinger

Based on the 1963 screenplay “Charade” by Stone

Distributed by Universal Pictures

Running time: 104 mins.

Rated PG-13

“The Truth about Charlie” was that it needed better screenwriters and actors. Writing movie reviews I’ve requires pondering on the best points to critique. “The Truth” is so horrible that I found myself with nothing good to write about.

A widow named Regina (Thandie Newton of “Mission: Impossible 2”) is shocked to find out that her late husband had many identities and a large sum of money outside of his life with her. As soon as discovers this second life of her husband, she finds herself being pursued by three thugs who want the dough. In the midst of being chased, threatened, and confused, she also finds the time to fall in love with Joshua (Mark Wahlburg of “Planet of the Apes”). God forbid a movie should be made without a love story, no matter how hard they have to cram it in. With each character introduced into the film, her endangerment grows accordingly.

A description as such points out the obvious in this flawed suspense film: the mystery and twists are gruelingly predictable. The superfluous acts of tension in the film are worn out and come at the cost of the movie’s coherency. By the end, I didn’t care any more. The plot is overworked, explaining were the money went, who had it, and why. By the time the audience finds out (if they stayed that long), it’s too ridiculous to even ponder the huge plot holes.

Among the unavoidable “Truths” is the cast of underdeveloped characters that the audience would find hard to care about. Casting Wahlburg in the film was a horrible idea because he added a dash of annoyance to top off his unmoving and unconvincing character. Next is the comedy portion of the film (if I could call it that). One word explained it: awkward. The writers tried to hard to mix mystery with comedy, which very rarely came off as funny. Most of the time I found myself saying “what?” along with the rest of the audience during such supposed humorous moments. If it was not completely awkward, it came off as just plain cheesy.

One scene in the film showed Regina spontaneously doing the tango in a French bar with the thugs and everyone else in the film. It made absolutely no sense, as did so many other scenes. Another had Regina and Joshua dancing in an apartment to the music from a singer in the next room. I think this scene was supposed to be avant gard and reminiscent of the original play but it was almost funny and fell flat.

One might think that since the movie was set in Paris, France, that it should have been in French with English subtitles. The Dogma Production (independent film style) effects of the film came off poorly and without reason as well.

All that said, there was one good quality of the film: it did have beautiful shots of Paris and London, complete with cobble stone roads and cafes. But that’s about it.