Mortdecai - The part-time crook

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Movie
German title Mortdecai - The part-time crook
Original title Mortdecai
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2015
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 10
Rod
Director David Koepp
script Eric Aronson
production Christi Dembrowski ,
Johnny Depp ,
Andrew Lazar ,
Patrick McCormick ,
Gigi Pritzker
music Mark Ronson ,
Geoff Zanelli
camera Florian Hoffmeister
cut Derek Ambrosi ,
Jill Savitt
occupation

Mortdecai - Der Teilzeitgauner (Original title: Mortdecai ) is an American crime comedy with Johnny Depp , Gwyneth Paltrow and Paul Bettany in the lead roles. The film is based on the novels by Kyril Bonfiglioli .

Depp plays Charlie Mortdecai, an aristocratic bon vivant who is troubled by money. Due to his tax debts and previous misdemeanors, the British secret service MI-5 forced him to steal a picture that supposedly had a code for a numbered account on the back .

action

The English Lord Charlie Mortdecai is an art dealer who also makes his living with scams. He and his servant Jock regularly get into problems like shootouts and fights, which Jock usually has to solve. In the opening scene, Mortdecai tries to sell the Asian Fang Fat a valuable vase, whereupon he first pushes the price from three to a million dollars because Mortdecai had cheated on him in an earlier business, and then doesn't pay anything and Mortdecai cuts off a finger want to let. A fight ensues, in the course of which the bar and the vase break and Jock and Mortdecai escape.

After several failed deals, Mortdecai is destitute and has high tax debts. His wife Johanna then decided to have parts of the art collection sold at auction. At the same time, Mortdecai wants to sell his Rolls-Royce to the American Milton Krampf and for this purpose has the workshop operator Spinoza fix it.

During his last business trip, Mortdecai grew a mustache, which he affectionately calls "Mustache", and wants to surprise his wife with it. However, she withdraws from him in disgust and demands that he shave. When he later comes to her room and after a long begging he can get her to kiss him after all, she gets a gag reflex and she continues to insist that the "Mustache" has to go away.

The restorer Bronwen is murdered with an arrow by Emil Strago, a well-known terrorist, and Strago steals the picture she is working on; As it turns out later, this is a long-lost Goya , on the back of which Hermann Göring is said to have immortalized the number of a Swiss bank account. While Strago tries to flee with it, he is knocked down by another person who steals the picture from him.

Inspector Martland, who has long been in love with Johanna, instructs Mortdecai to get the picture back. Mortdecai accepts the order and begins to get information from the art dealer Sir Graham and from Spinoza, who is also active in art smuggling. While he is talking to Spinoza, Strago shoots him and Mortdecai can only escape with the help of Jock. Shortly afterwards, Mortdecai is kidnapped by two Russian thugs, Dmitri and Vladimir, and taken to the Russian art collector Romanov in Moscow, who assumes that Mortdecai has the lost picture and wants to force it from him through torture. Again, with the help of his servant, Mortdecai manages to escape and return to England. In the meantime, Johanna was able to ask the inspector about the background of the case and thus got to the restorer's servant and her lover, the Duke.

Upon his return to London Airport, Mortdecai is intercepted by Martland and sent directly to Los Angeles, where he is supposed to hand over his Rolls-Royce to Milton Krampf. Martland found out that the painting was sold to Krampf. When he arrives at Krampf, the latter takes the picture of the paneling of the Rolls-Royce with which Mortdecai has just arrived. At Krampf's estate, his daughter Georgina tries to seduce Mortdecai. Krampf throws a party to unveil the stolen painting in the evening and Jock and Mortdecai decide to steal the painting in the evening. During the party, Johanna and later Martland appear. When Mortdecai comes to Krampf's room, he finds him murdered by Strago, who is rolling up the picture and is about to flee. He is provided by Mortdecai, Johanna and Jock, who are then surprised by Georgina, who makes common cause with Strago. Georgina and Strago escape with the picture, but Mortdecai and Martland chase them before they can solve the mystery. During the fire lit by Martland afterwards, in which the entire apartment explodes, the picture is also destroyed.

Mortdecai and his wife now reconstruct the entire story and conclude that the picture was a fake that Bronwen had made on the basis of the original that must be hanging in the bathroom of the Duke, her lover. When the Mortdecais arrive at the Duke, the Duke has died and they take the original. In order to sell it, they develop a plan to paint over it with the motif of the picture they have given for auction and to distribute this information to the art dealer circles in order to get a maximum price for the picture. At the auction, both Strago and the Russian thugs Romanovs and the henchmen of Fang Fat try to take the picture from Mortdecai, but are fended off by Jock. Mortdecai succeeds in the exchange and gets on the auction fast enough to drive the price up. Romanov buys the picture at the end and can take it with him to Moscow, where he finds out that he was tricked: The Mortdecais had prepared another picture and are now in possession of the original.

In the final scene, the couple get into the bathtub together and Johanna insists that Charlie finally remove the "Mustache", which he then adds out of love for her. She then asks him to keep him, but after the first kiss she suffers another gag reflex.

background

The film opened in the United States on January 23, 2015, and in Germany on January 22, 2015. With a budget of 60 million US dollars, Mortdecai flopped at the box office with only 4.2 million dollars on its opening weekend in the US. Income in the following weeks fell by 65 percent and then by almost 90 percent. The worldwide box office result amounts to 30.4 million US dollars.

reception

The film received mostly negative reviews. At Metacritic , the film received a Metascore of 28/100 based on 20 reviews, at Rotten Tomatoes 12 percent of the 89 reviews were positive. In summary, one writes there that the film was "aggressively strange and deliberately unwilling" and "a low point in Johnny Depp's career after the Pirates of the Caribbean ".

Cinema found that there was “nothing to be felt” in the film from the “dazzling, anarchic spirit of the novel”. Johnny Depp's “affected behavior” seems “silly and fake” and exhausts itself “in endless repetitions”. Mortdecai wanted to be understood as "a satire on the world of the rich idlers", but was "a frighteningly pointless comedy with a blond, mustached Johnny Depp, whose freak performance is gradually becoming a nuisance". The conclusion of the site: "Colorful, extravagant crook comedy with little successful gags and a Johnny Depp in Jack Sparrow mode."

In contrast, Mortdecai received five stars on Kino.de , which describes it as a “weird action comedy with a cool international top cast” and certifies a “new star role” for Depp.

Of epd film received Mortdecai 3 stars out of 5. Johnny Depp was praised for “convincingly developing his craft as an eccentric from the service [...]”. However, Koepp “relies too much on the exhilarating potential of his main actor” and “loses sight of the comedic dynamic of the story, which increasingly stumbles into tired plot turns and narrative redundancies”.

Christoph Petersen also rated the film with 3 out of 5 stars at film releases and said that the film was “in the tradition of the legendary ' Pink Panther ' series”. Depp orientates himself “on the egomaniacal lack of plan of Peter Sellers ' Inspector Clouseau”, while the director takes over the “slapstick-like action” from Blake Edwards . Petersen praised the actors, besides Johnny Depp, who was "bursting with enthusiasm again this time", especially Gwyneth Paltrow, who appeared "self-confident, quick-witted and timelessly elegant". Petersen summed up, Mortdecai offers “elegant, entertaining crime-slapstick comedy with playful stars and black-humored tips”.

Prisma said that Mortdecai was "downright silly humbug", but was still "a lot of fun". At the end of the day, David Koepp “succeeded in creating a well-cast and thoroughly amusing flick, but one that should by no means be taken seriously”.

The film service saw in Mortdecai a “crazy novel adaptation that gives an illustrious star ensemble space to fool around without restraint”, “whereby the humor alternates between crude slapstick , puns and absurd situational comedy ”. The film is "at its core [...] tailored to the star persona of its main actor Johnny Depp".

The film was nominated for the Golden Raspberry 2016 in three categories:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Mortdecai - Der Teilzeitgauner . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2015 (PDF; test number: 149 290 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Mortdecai - Der Teilzeitgauner . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Ray Suber: Weekend Report: 'Sniper' Scores Stunning $ 64 Million in Second Weekend . In: BoxOfficeMojo.com . January 25, 2015. Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  4. ↑ Mortdecai . In: BoxOfficeMojo.com . Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  5. ↑ Mortdecai . In: Metacritic.com . Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  6. ↑ Mortdecai . In: RottenTomatoes.com . Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  7. ↑ Mortdecai - The part-time crook . In: Cinema.de . Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  8. ↑ Mortdecai - The part-time crook . In: Kino.de . Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  9. ↑ Mortdecai - The part-time crook . In: epd-film.de . Retrieved April 17, 2015.
  10. ↑ Mortdecai - The part-time crook . In: Filmstarts.de . Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  11. ↑ Mortdecai - The part-time crook . In: Prisma.de . Retrieved August 25, 2015.
  12. ↑ Mortdecai - The part-time crook . In: Filmdienst.de . Retrieved August 25, 2015.