Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I count three times that Mark Wahlberg has taken parts that were originally done by stars from old Hollywood. He was the astronaut taking Charlton Heston's role in the remake of Planet Of The Apes. He played John Wayne's role in the urban remake of The Sons Of Katie Elder, Four Sons. Finally in this film, Wahlberg tries out playing the many named man that Cary Grant played in Charade. As in Charade, do we ever know The Truth About Charlie.Three different icons with three different personalities. Well at least he didn't try to imitate Cary Grant in The Truth About Charlie. Mark was his own man here and frankly he's the best thing about this film. Thandie Newton never seemed as vulnerable as Audrey Hepburn in the original. And Tim Robbins was absolutely colorless as the fake CIA man, not a patch on Walter Matthau.But the biggest error was the elimination of those colorful conspirators George Kennedy, James Coburn, and Ned Glass from the original. Those guys added so much to Charade.Not to mention the style and glamor that Stanley Donen brought to Charade has been boiled right out of this film. Jonathan Demme who got such acclaim for Silence Of The Lambs was the man at the helm. None of these people qualify as a Hannibal the Cannibal type villain. I think he forgot what picture he was on.Fans of the original will be sadly disappointed.

A young woman in Paris is about to divorce her husband when she discovers he's been killed and all their money is gone. She meets a mysterious man, who tells her that the money was really his, and he wants it back, seemingly convinced that she's hiding the cash. Meanwhile, more people end up dead, or worse.......get to wear berets....Heaven knows what Demme was thinking when he made this, maybe he was having a bet with Ted or something, because, as you would expect, it's not the best film in the world.Sometimes it's verging on parody, and there are points when you think Wahlberg will break the fourth wall and wink at the audience, as his and Newtons acting is pretty pantomime.But it looks wonderful to look at, and the editing and the filming style is straight from the French New Wave, at least it has that going for it.As a remake, it sucks. The narrative is pretty dopey, and makes no sense to the story.And the film makes the biggest plot hole these types of mysteries do, have a being star with an 'and' before their name, you can guarantee that they are the villain.Lovely to look at, painful to watch.

Despite my usual loathing of remakes, sequels, prequels and the like, I tried very hard to like this film. I am a fan of a lot of Mark Wahlberg's work and wanted to see how they would give a modern treatment of a very typically 60s film. And there were a few things (a very few things) they got right.First of all, I will applaud the creative team for pushing this film into a different direction than the first. A verbatim retelling is not worth the effort. This film is a lot grittier, a lot more "realistic" than the Grant-Hepburn story. Gone are the campy references and glossy colors. But here it still falters, trying to retain some of the humor and almost naive romance in a vastly different world where such things just don't seem appropriate.I also appreciate the background they gave on Regina, explaining how she could possibly have married a man she knew nothing about. I admit it had always bugged me. But they took it a step too far in trying to give all the secondary characters too much dimensionality. When they tried to force sympathy down our throats, it just became very confusing. I still cannot figure out what in the world was going on with the Lola character or why Regina cared so much about a person who was constantly posing a threat to her.I was most disappointed in the sacrifice of suspense and plot twists for the sake of action. While I applaud trying to make something new, there was no reason to fiddle with the guaranteed seat-gripping plot. Somehow the focus shifted from a stunning who-dunnit to a deflated undercover cop film you could see coming a mile ahead. I would like to have the opinion of someone who has not seen the original on this film to see if this can stand on its own feet. But then again, I would hate to deprive them of the excitement of unraveling the mystery of Charade for the first time.

'The Truth About Charlie' is not worthy to be a remake of the great 'Charade'. To be honest, I don't even get why they had to remake that film since it still works today, both as a Hitchcockian thriller and as comedy. But they did remake it, and where the original film stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, two of the greatest stars in the movies, this film gives us Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton. Personally I like Wahlberg, especially in 'Boogie Nights', 'Three Kings' and later film 'The Departed', but apparently this role was for Grant only; Wahlberg does not pull it off. For me personally Newton ruined the film. I never understood whether this film contained the comedic elements as they were in 'Charade' or not, but whatever it was, it felt weird and out of place. Mainly, Newton's performance was the cause of this.The second distraction comes from Paris as the setting. Director Jonathan Demme, who has lost most of his 'The Silence of the Lambs'-touch, is too much in love with it. By now the world has seen the Eiffel Tower, and for that matter has heard Charles Aznavour (who appears from time to time), and the film does not realize this. If the story is only a backdrop for a place and an atmosphere, at least show us elements of both things we are not acquainted with. The story, by the way, deals with Newton as Regina Lambert who finds out Charlie, her husband for three months, now dead, used to lead more than one life. Apparently he had six million dollars in diamonds and now the French police, a couple of former soldiers who fought with Charlie, and a character played by Tim Robbins are after it. Mark Wahlberg's character named Joshua Peters pops up everywhere Newton seems to need him, meaning his role will stay vague as long as the film wants it to be.When the closing scenes finally arrived I did not care anymore. Who was who and why and for what reason; it didn't matter to me, I was just glad the film was over. The final scenes were supposed to have some suspense in it, but even that was spoiled by annoying close-ups and many cuts. I have seen quite some bad films over the years but this time I was really amazed with such good material wasted in such a complete way.