Mortdecai (2015)

Storylin

Juggling angry Russians, the British Mi5, and an international terrorist, debonair art dealer and part time rogue Charlie Mortdecai races to recover a stolen painting rumored to contain a code that leads to lost Nazi gold.

Director:

David Koepp

Writers:

Eric Aronson (screenplay), Kyril Bonfiglioli (novel) 

 Mortdecai Reviews

I love eccentric characters whether they are the silent Mr. Bean, the bumbling Inspector Clouseau or even the wealthy treasure hunter Scrooge McDuck. Like any good story about an outcast, they are deemed stranger then the rest of the world and tend to use that to their advantage to find a gold mine or crack the latest case in France. I too consider myself an eccentric with my oddball quirks and strange interests including amusement park history and animation. You could say that everyone has a little eccentric inside of them, but only few would dare express it as their full personality.

Cinema is a large home to this breed of person. Often you will find these people associated with comedies as they make it aware that the characters behavior is more out of place, even if the world they live in is exaggerated or romanticized. Though I would love to see a drama about an oddball, these try to explain some mental illness like that their sick or something. This is something that I wish more movies would try to cut away from and simply explain that this is your hero and he's this way just because. We get another quirky eccentric with Mortdecai.

Lord Charlie Mortdecai (played by Johnny Depp) is a pompous, wealthy art dealer who tries to portray himself as classy, comes off of a goof. He lives in a large home along with his man servant/muscle Jock Strapp (played by Paul Bettany) and his wife who he always declares as the love of his life Johanna (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). A Goya painting is stolen from a woman that was working on restoring the artwork. So this puts inspector Alistair Martland (played by Ewan McGregor) on the case. He has a thing for Johanna, so he contacts Mortdecai for his services, knowing that this would keep the eccentric busy while he get's cozy with the wife.