I am a huge fan of Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn if you haven't gathered from my list of favorite movies. I can say honestly I had misgivings about reworking one of my favorite movies, Charade. But Demme moves it far enough away from the original so you are not likely to be remembering the '63 movie.

The film opens with the camera moving around an office, showing maps of Paris, paintings and pictures of who we later learn is Joshua (real picture of Mark & his mom around TPS among others) and his mom.

Reggie (Thandie Newton) is on vacation in Martinique when she meets and flirts with a stranger on the beach. She is ready to divorce her husband, Charles (Stephen Dillane) who we see dilly dallying with a girl on a train and later getting killed by an unknown person.

Reggie returns to Paris and is waiting for Charles to pick her up, but who should show up but Joshua. They share a cab and Joshua reluctantly leaves for his place. Reggie returns to her flat to discover it empty and trashed. As she runs to room to room, she encounters the Paris police who inform her of her husband's death.

Her husband, she discovers is not who she thought he was, he has several passports and had liquidated all of his assets, ready to go to South America. As if its not enough she soon learns there are other people after her husband - or more accurately his money and thiink she has it, according to an American government official, Lewis Bartholomew (Tim Robbins).

Overwhelmed by it all, Joshua shows up and offers to help her get out of the empty loft. As Reggie is being wooed by Joshua, her doubts are brought up by a phone call by someone else out for Charles' money.

It is from there that Reggie tries to balance her trust to Joshua & Lewis and reluctantly finding out who killed her husband.

Anycase, that's the set up for the movie. As you might be able to tell by now, this is Thandie Newton's film. And she makes the most of it and is lovely in the role. The only quibble is her trust in the people she meets. But I suppose this could be a French film influence (ie Amelie)

Since Thandie is the center of the film, Mark is thus regulated to a support character instead of a fellow lead. Its hard to tell if its meant to be like that, if it was just underwritten because the other minor characters are more fleshed out to his character's detriment or I'm just highly prejudiced by my viewings of Charade - which was centrally about both Reggie and Joshua. Joshua is unfortunately a weak area in the film. He's so mysterious, we don't know much about him til very late in the film, in which case it is too late. It makes it hard to know why Reggie trusts & likes him so much outside of his helpfulness and obvious good looks. That brings me to the hats he wears. It looks wrong. It doesn't look as silly on moving film, but it just looks strange on him.

Tim Robbins did an interesting job. He was quite quirky actually and it took me awhile to figure why it seemed odd. He sounded almost exactly like Walter Matthau.

Christine Boisson as the lead policewoman is exceptional in the role of the Commandante investigating Charles' death. She's almost menacing and threatening then seductive and vulnerable. 

The other support players also have significantly beefed up scenes, some worked and others seemed out of the blue.

I wont spoil the ending for you, but there is a resembalance to Run Lola Run as Joshua and another character run for the stolen goods, a showdown (shot so it reminded me of the German film, Wings of Desire) that reveals the truth finally and then there's a scene straight out of James Bond (think Ms. Moneypenny) that later morphs into a Gigi-like ending. It sounds like alot but don't look for them, as these are my own interpretations of very interesting looking scenes that occurred long after I left the movie house. 

As the credits roll, don't go anywhere. There are more homages including to one of Demme's own!

All and all I think this is a very fun movie with great performances by Thandie and Christine. The shots of Paris are things you don't usually see in ordinary films. It is the modern Paris with the dark and seedy next to the modern and the ultimate symbol of Paris, the Eiffel Tower.

My grade: B