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Who is Alexander Pearce: The Tourist Movie Review

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The Tourist recap: Depp and Jolie in a pointless nearly-caper

"this man is a tourist" – elise.

The Tourist should have been a raging success. A sumptuous $100m Hitchcockian thriller, set in the most impossibly scenic slivers of Europe, starring two of the most intimidatingly beautiful people alive. A script by Christopher McQuarrie from The Usual Suspects and Julian Fellowes from Downton Abbey . Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who won an Oscar for The Lives of Others , in the director's chair. What could have possibly gone wrong?

A lot, it turns out. Although blame has been assigned to everything from a constant churn of writers, directors and stars to the incredibly short production turnaround, the fact is that The Tourist is a colossal hodgepodge of wasted opportunity. Or at least it seemed that way back in 2010. Has it improved with age?

"Why is everyone trying to kill me?" – Frank

Nope. At first glance, the main problem with The Tourist is that everyone seems to be starring in a completely different film. Jolie treats the entire thing like a big-budget, gussied-up, Vaseline-lensed perfume ad; her vainglorious attempt at Nicole Kidman's "I'm a dancer! I love to dance!" Chanel commercial . Johnny Depp, meanwhile, has two approaches. Perhaps it's all those years of desperate contortion to make the tortured Pirates of the Caribbean dialogue seem in any way humorous, but he plays everything for laughs here. His other approach, the more immediate one, is to try and get through the entire film without ever actually opening his mouth. And then there's Steven Berkoff who, because he's Steven Berkoff, mistakes his character for a screaming lunatic trapped at the bottom of a well.

The worst crime of all, though, is the comprehensive lack of chemistry between Depp and Jolie. After all, her entire mission ostensibly involves finding a stranger and unleashing the full force of her sexual charisma upon him until he's powerless to resist. Their first meeting on a train had the potential to be immediately iconic, bristling with tension and longing. In truth, though, it's barely even a Gold Blend advert. Jolie's seductive gaze is so hamfisted that it makes her look like a little old lady struggling to read a menu through cataracts. Depp's first instinct, obviously, is to respond to this bloodless come-on by giving a blank-eyed yet surprisingly comprehensive explanation of how e-cigarettes work. And this is just about as sexy as the film gets. After that, the whole thing descends into tedious cinematic anti-Viagra. It's an enormous disappointment.

"You're ravenous" – Frank

So that's the beginning of the film. The middle of the film is equal parts European scenery, mumbling and Angelina Jolie attempting to liven things up by playing a sort of Buckaroo game where she sees how much makeup and jewellery she can load on to her face without her head popping off. And then, gloriously, the film is rounded out by a twist so aggressively dimwitted that you'd get up and kick your television over if the preceding 92 minutes hadn't entirely sapped you of your will to live.

If this is your first time watching The Tourist, I'm totally about to spoil the ending for yo u . But then again you've read this far and still want to watch it, so you've got it coming. At the end it's revealed that Johnny Depp's character isn't a schlubby community-college teacher after all. He's actually Alexander Pearce, a man wanted by the police for an overdue payment of hundreds of millions of pounds in taxes. He also used to go out with Angelina Jolie. But he had plastic surgery, so she didn't recognise him. But she recognised him enough to pick him out of an entire carriage of strangers. If that was the point of his surgery. It might not have been. This film is so stupid.

Also, at the end of this pointless and unnecessarily long nearly-caper – the one that takes place across two countries and involves mistaken identity and expensive hotels and torture and death and enough lens-Vaseline to lubricate an entire tectonic plate – Johnny Depp just writes the police a cheque for his unpaid taxes. He went through all that, when he could have just written a cheque at the start of the film and saved everyone a lot of wasted time that they're never going to get back. Johnny Depp is an idiot.

There's no way of saying how much shorter this film would be if you cut out all the scenes where Jolie and Depp gaze at each other in total dead-eyed silence. But, conservatively, let's say it'd be 15 times shorter.

I have now watched The Tourist three times, and it's only just occurred to me that Angelina Jolie is actually doing a pretty spot-on Anne Robinson impression.

• Angelina Jolie
• Johnny Depp
• Julian Fellowes
• Crime films
• Drama films

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The Tourist

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Rent The Tourist on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

What to Know

The scenery and the stars are undeniably beautiful, but they can't make up for The Tourist 's slow, muddled plot, or the lack of chemistry between Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Johnny Depp

Frank Tupelo

Angelina Jolie

Elise Clifton-Ward

Paul Bettany

Inspector John Acheson

Timothy Dalton

Chief Inspector Jones

Steven Berkoff

Reginald Shaw

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The Tourist Review

10 Dec 2010

102 minutes

Tourist, The

It’s an irony that can’t have escaped their ‘people’, that Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp – who have the chiselled charisma and elegant cool associated with movie stars in the 1950s and ‘60s heyday of well-dressed international romantic thrillers – have spent so much of their careers trying to be dowdy, neurotic, eccentric or freakish. So, it’s no surprise they’re tempted to take on a cosmopolitan romp before gearing up for another Oscar bid nervous breakdown or Tim Burton goth grotesque.

Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise succumbed to much the same urges in Knight And Day, which set the bar low enough to give this a clear field – that was a romantic comedy/thriller which managed not to be sexy, funny or exciting but made a lot of noise, whereas the cocktail is mixed much better here. It’s light on action, but long on elegance with Jolie costumed and coiffeured for a high-end glamour shoot in every scene, and Depp carrying off a white tux and frilly shirt in the big ball sequence. However, it doesn’t quite fizz enough: early on, Depp compliments woman of mystery Jolie by calling her ‘the least down-to-Earth person I’ve ever met’ which underlines how miscast he seems to be as the everyman since the one thing Depp can’t do is ‘ordinary’; and smouldering looks don’t make up for a surprising lack of heat between these fabulous creatures.

The plot is a jeu d’esprit somewhere between North By Northwest and Cipher, populated by fantasy cops played by Paul Bettany and Timothy Dalton and retro baddies like Steven Berkoff. Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, following up the outstanding The Lives Of Others, changes mood but still spends a lot of time on surveillance technology and peeping policemen.

There are twists and turns and reversals and revelations, and a sweet shadow performance by Rufus Sewell as the trickster who leads the story around by the nose, but little reason to be engaged in the perilous action. Where Knight And Day trashed tourist landmarks, this is timid even in its Venetian rooftop or canal chases and calling in Julian Fellowes to punch up the script still doesn’t import enough wit to keep the bubbles afloat.

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• French-language films
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The Tourist

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The Tourist is a 2010 American romantic comedy thriller film co-written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and starring Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany, and Timothy Dalton. It is based on the screenplay for Anthony Zimmer. GK Films financed and produced the film, with Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions releasing it in most countries through Columbia Pictures. The $100 million budget film went on to gross $278 million at the worldwide box office.

Despite negative reception from the critics, the film was nominated for three Golden Globes, with a debate arising over the question as to whether it was a comedy or a drama. Henckel von Donnersmarck repeatedly stated it was neither genre, calling it "a travel romance with thriller elements," but that if he had to choose between the two, he would choose comedy.

• 4.1 Posters
• 5 External link

Synopsys [ ]

Elise (Angelina Jolie) sits next to an American tourist, Frank (Johnny Depp), on a train going to Venice. She has chosen him as a decoy, making believe that he is her lover who is wanted by police. Not only will they need to evade the police, but also the mobster whose money her lover stole.

A woman named Elise (Angelina Jolie) is being trailed in Paris by French police working with Scotland Yard. At a cafe, she receives a letter from Alexander Pearce, a former lover, with explicit directions to board a train to Venice, Italy, pick out a man who resembles him, and make the police believe that this man is Alexander Pearce. A mysterious stranger, not involved with the police, also seems to be watching Elise. Elise burns the letter and boards a train.

She takes a seat across from Frank (Johnny Depp), an American tourist reading a spy novel. Frank is instantly attracted to her. The train arrives in Venice, and she invites him to go with her on a boat to the Hotel Danieli. At dinner, much to Frank's dismay, Elise admits to having feelings for another man, presumably Alexander Pearce. Later, on her room's balcony they share a kiss, witnessed by the men following her.

The next day, Frank awakens to find Elise gone. Men suddenly try to break into the hotel room. Frank barely escapes by running over several roofs in his pajamas, but is caught by the Italian police. A sympathetic detective listens to Frank's story that he does not know why these men are after him. He takes Frank from the jail and tells him that his story checks out and that the men after him were Belarusians, who have placed a price on his head and believe Frank to be someone else. The detective, however, then delivers Frank into the clutches of these same men, in order to collect the money they promised.

Elise suddenly appears with a boat to rescue Frank, and they flee together. Elise finally tells Frank that all this is happening because she kissed him and made the police believe that he was Alexander Pearce. Frank learns that Pearce stole two billion dollars from a gangster named Shaw (Steven Berkoff) and is also wanted by the British Government for tax evasion. Stunned by the news, Frank says he still does not regret kissing Elise.

Elise apologizes for getting him involved at all and tricks Frank off the boat. Frank says he loves her. Elise goes to a government building. She turns out to be a British secret agent. She sees her fellow British agent Acheson (Paul Bettany), who was among those following her in Paris. Elise was supposed to work undercover against Pearce but fell in love with him and had disappeared from her job until now. She tells Acheson that she is ready to help him find Pearce now because she wants to prevent anybody else from getting hurt.

Elise goes to a ball Pearce has invited her to attend, wearing a wire. She is handed a letter by the same mysterious stranger from Paris. The letter is from Pearce, saying where to meet him. As Elise turns to leave, Frank appears and prevents her exit. They dance. Elise leaves to find Pearce, and agent Acheson's men apprehend Frank. They both watch on surveillance equipment as Elise walks into a trap set by the gangster Shaw. The gangster threatens to kill her unless she reveals the location of the safe holding the money Pearce stole from him. Agent Acheson doesn't intervene for his colleague Elise, confident that Pearce will show up to rescue her.

Elise reveals the safe's location but does not know its code. Frank watches in horror as Elise is threatened yet again. Seeing that Acheson won't help Elise, Frank picks the lock to his handcuffs and escapes to help her. Frank pretends to be Pearce. Elise begs him to stop or he will be killed. Frank, acting as Pearce, tells Shaw that he will get his money, but only if Elise is first released and safe. As Frank pretends that he is about to open the safe, Elise mouths "I love you."

All of a sudden, Chief Inspector Jones (Timothy Dalton) gives the order for the police snipers to shoot Shaw and his men. Frank and Elise are unharmed. As the police survey the scene, agent Acheson can't believe that Pearce did not save Elise, and Jones is furious with him for exposing her to danger. Jones then informs Elise that she has been terminated from the force. A police report informs them that Pearce has just been caught. As the room clears, Elise and Frank embrace. He asks her if she loves both him and Alexander Pearce. Elise answers yes. To spare her from this dilemma, Frank demonstrates that he is the real Alexander Pearce by entering the correct code for the safe. Pearce had gotten plastic surgery, so he could have a new life.

Meanwhile, the arrested man believed to be Pearce explains to police that he was paid to pose as him but that he is really just a tourist. Elise and Frank/Pearce leave on a boat with the money, finally being able to be together. In the open safe, police find a bankers check for the 744 million pounds in back taxes Pearce owed the British government.

• Angelina Jolie as Elise Clifton-Ward
• Johnny Depp as Frank Tupelo/Alexander Pearce
• Paul Bettany as Insp. John Acheson
• Timothy Dalton as Chief Insp. Jones
• Steven Berkoff as Reginald Shaw
• Rufus Sewell as Lawrence
• Christian De Sica as Col. Lombardi
• Alessio Boni as Sgt. Cerato
• Daniele Pecci as Lt. Narduzzi
• Giovanni Guidelli as Lt. Tommassini
• Raoul Bova as Count Filippo Gaggia
• Igor Jijikine as Virginsky
• Bruno Wolkowitch as Capt. Courson
• Mhamed Arezki as Achmed Tchebali
• Marc Ruchmann as Brigadier Kaiser
• Julien Baumgartner as Brigadier Ricuort
• François Vincentelli as Brigadier Marion
• Nino Frassica as Brigadier Mele
• Neri Marcorè as Alessio, the hotel concierge
• Renato Scarpa as Arturo, a tailor
• Maurizio Casagrande as Antonio, a waiter

Gallery [ ]

Posters [ ].

External link [ ]

• 1 The Longest Ride
• 2 IF (2024)
• 3 Carl Nargle

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Film Review: The Tourist

We never miss an opportunity to see Angelina on the big screen. Check out our review of her new thriller.

It all started, they say, when he met a woman. This is the precedent to The Tourist starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. Officially, this is a crime thriller. Unofficially it’s a romantic comedy with a couple Russian mobsters and some cat-and-mouse spy stuff thrown in.

Jolie plays Elise, the extraordinary and beautiful girlfriend of a man named Alexander Pearce, who is a criminal wanted for embezzling $2 billion from a mobster. The British police have Elise under constant surveillance as they believe Pearce will make contact with her.

The police want to collect their $775 million that’s owed to them in back taxes from the stolen money. The angry mobster wants Elise dead, Pearce captured, and his money returned.

In an effort to rendezvous with Peace and throw the police off the trail, Elise boards a train from Paris to Venice. While on-board she picks up Frank Taylor (played by Johnny Depp), an American math teacher from Wisconsin on his way to a vacation in Venice following the death of his wife.

Through association and seduction, Elise convinces the police that this bumbling man from Wisconsin is Alexander Pearce in disguise.

Frank unknowingly becomes a target for everyone from mobsters to the Scotland Yard, and is always two steps behind as the web of intrigue and romance builds around him. Shot against the backdrop of Paris and Venice, the romance between Elise and Frank quickly evolves as they find themselves thrust into a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Jolie first appears on-screen smartly dressed and waltzing up a Parisian street, a smile that says she knows she’s being watched. A red scarf is around her waist and knotted at the back, which twitches like a horse’s tail as she struts.

She seems to be playing with the cops and there’s a feeling that we’re being set up for something great. But the build-up stops there and we’re left waiting more. The film waffles through most of its run, attempting to build tension but not quite getting there.

Jolie still kicks ass and drives speed boats away from bad guys, but she’s also languishing over a boyfriend, making her role in The Tourist feel mis-matched for her. She has played Elise as calm and in-control but it comes off as detached and icy. We are treated to many close-ups of her face and infamous lips, so if her performance or the Venetian scenery doesn’t do it for you those certainly will.

Depp is poorly cast as a dazed Midwesterner, and while he tries his best, he seems uncomfortable. It is the colorful nature of his characters (the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, for example) we’re so often drawn to, and here we’re asked to be convinced that he is average.

The writers have given him a fake cigarette to suck on, though that is the only glint of the flamboyant Depp we know and love. Depp’s everyman seems bewildered in his role, leaving Jolie to pick up the slack. The lack of chemistry between them doesn’t allow this to happen and we’re left feeling an uncomfortable disconnect from plot to characterization.

The European director with the super-fun name, Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), has captured Venice and Paris beautifully. He has given us a world with remnants of the 1950s and there’s a timelessness to the characters outfits, their speech, and the fantastical world of Venice’s well-heeled socialites.

With Donnersmarck on board and Jolie and Depp as leads this mix seems like a potent combination, but it just misses the mark. The action scenes are sluggish when they should punch, the leads seem indifferent when we’re to believe they’re falling in love, and there’s a sense of burden as the plot twists and turns.

The Tourist tries its best with two of our favorite actors. Try your best to play along.

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Starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, The Tourist centers on Elise Clifton-Ward (Jolie), who is tasked with framing a random civilian for her lover's, Alexander Pearce, tax evasion. A tourist named Frank Tupelo (Depp) is chosen because Pearce supposedly altered his appearance with plastic surgery. Despite having clear instructions from Pearce, Elise has a change of heart and tries to rescue Frank.

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'The Tourist' Review

The defining characteristics of 'The Tourist' are its overt efforts to emphasize that Angelina Jolie is beautiful and that Johnny Depp is a 'regular guy.'

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"We waste our money so you don't have to."

"We waste our money, so you don't have to."

Movie Review

The tourist.

US Release Date: 12-10-2010

Directed by: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Starring ▸ ▾

• Johnny Depp ,  as
• Frank Tupelo
• Angelina Jolie ,  as
• Elise Clifton-Ward
• Paul Bettany ,  as
• Inspector John Acheson
• Timothy Dalton ,  as
• Chief Inspector Jones
• Steven Berkoff ,  as
• Reginald Shaw
• Rufus Sewell as
• The Englishman

Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in The Tourist .

With its plot of an American tourist caught up in an espionage situation in Europe after meeting a mysterious femme fatale on a train, I was reminded of an Alfred Hitchcock film. I was also reminded of just how much better he probably could have made it.

The biggest mistake with the plot is that it gives away most of its secrets in the first five minutes as it sets up the situation.  Angelina Jolie plays Elise, the girlfriend of wanted criminal Alexander Pearce.  Interpol is following Elise in the hopes that she will lead them to Alexander, whom they are unable to recognize because it's believed that he has changed his appearance via plastic surgery.

Elise receives a note from Pearce telling her to get on a train and find someone who looks a bit like him in build and to pretend to know him so that the police will think that this stranger is Pearce.  Elise finds Frank (Depp) and chats him up on the train to Venice.  What follows is a matter of confused identity as the police and some mobsters pursue Frank and Elise through Venice.

A much better way to tell the story would have been to start from Frank's point of view on the train and suddenly have this mysterious woman sit down across from him and then he and the audience could have pieced the story together as the movie progressed.  Who is she?  What does she want?  Why are these men trying to kill her?  Instead we are spoonfed the entire story and there is no mystery left in it, unless you count the final "twist" which frankly is pretty obvious before it ever twists.

Jolie gets to play dress up in the movie and she does a convincing English accent.  She looks the part, except for the fact that she is about 20 or 30 pounds underweight.  When she bears her arms they look like skeleton arms with skin stretched tight over bone.  At least, unlike Salt , her film from earlier this year, we aren't expected to believe that she is a fighter.  She's more the glamourous type here.

The normally eccentric Johnny Depp plays it straight and frankly, rather boring.  You could see Cary Grant in this part if Hitchcock had directed it, but Depp lacks Grant's charm.  He also seems unable to come up with the romantic chops to really sell his relationship with Jolie.  They share a weak chemistry.  And although there are some lighter moments the movie lacks the light touch neccessary to really make it fun.

And that's The Tourist 's biggest problem.  It's just not that much fun.  It's got a great cast.  Along with the stars, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton and Rufus Sewell all have small parts.  It's got a great and exotic location and even some decent action scenes.  It's just that overall none of that adds up to much charm or sense of fun.  On a side note, it also features what is basically a commercial for e-cigarettes that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Although I was never bored and the story moves quickly along, a movie with this cast and this premise should have been much better than this one.

Jolie looks dolled up, while Depp needs to clean up.

As Scott wrote, their is very little actual fun to be found here.  The entire gimmick rests on the plot twists.  It gives away so much early on as it assumes the twists are enough.  They are not.  Once they are revealed, earlier events in the film do not make sense.  I will not give the twists away, but once they show up, you might start to wonder why the characters acted the way they did.  The scene where she happens to be in a boat where he just happens to be near the canal looking at a map, is just one that comes to mind. 

The normally very charismatic Jolie looks like a Barbie doll here.  She wears fashionable attire, as she walks around beautiful locations.  She is very skinny.  She wears elbow length gloves and sleeves most of the movie.   Apparently the makers of this film thought her anorexic arms needed covering as well.

I have never been a Depp fan.  Other than Captain Jack Sparrow, I have never been taken in by him.  I have heard women swoon over his looks, but I do not get it.  He is a bit over weight here, and has one of the ugliest hair cuts I could ever image any man having. 

The Tourist has two stars at the top of their fame, not talent.  It features a couple of beautiful, yet over used, settings.  Scott compared it to an almost Hitchcock film, and it does have an old fashioned feel to it.  I was reminded of To Catch a Thief , where Cary Grant and Grace Kelly dance around each other in a beautiful French setting, as the audience tries to guess who is telling the truth.  But as Scott also wrote, Depp is no Grant, and for that matter Jolie is not Grace Kelly.  Jolie plays dress up, while Kelly was dress up. 

Photos © Copyright Columbia Pictures (2010)

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Jurgen Klopp and leaving Liverpool: How his final day became a celebration

There is a respectful hush where Burnand Street meets Randolph Street, where a gable end has been transformed into a tourist attraction.

In the streets surrounding Liverpool ’s Anfield stadium, there is noise — sing-songs, guitars being strummed, a buzz of excitement and apprehension — but nobody talks next to the mural of Jurgen Klopp. They walk up to it, they gaze at his face grinning back at them and, on this particular day, most of them pause to catch their breath before posing for a photograph.

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They have visited the mural here before, but today, two hours before kick-off against Wolverhampton Wanderers on the final day of this Premier League campaign, it is different.

Today is the day Liverpool’s supporters have been dreading since that Friday in January when Klopp stared back at them from their smartphones, furrowed his brow, sighed and paused before solemnly announcing, “I will leave the club at the end of the season.”

Why Klopp decided he had to quit Liverpool - and what FSG does now

“The moment I saw the news on Facebook, I just thought, ‘No! What the f***?’,” says Happy, 29, who has flown in from Hong Kong. “I couldn’t accept it.”

“I still can’t accept he’s leaving after today’s game,” says Matt, 32, a fellow Hong Kong Red. “This morning I watched his final interview and I cried. I just want to cry every moment.”

What is he expecting Klopp’s farewell to be like? “Emotional,” he says. “Tissues at the ready. I didn’t even cry when my daughters were born, but today’s going to be different.”

There has been a desperation among supporters to be here for Klopp’s final game. At one stage, traders on secondary ticket sale websites were selling £60 ($76) tickets for £1,700 ($2,158). Those prices dropped once Liverpool fell out of contention for the Premier League title, but they were still going for 10 to 20 times face value all week.

The fans from Hong Kong reel off the cost of their trip: HKD 12,000 (£1,211; $1,538) for flights alone, plus accommodation and way beyond face value for tickets.

Aziz Ali, 20, from Kuwait, has flown in from Chicago for the occasion. “I need to be here, screaming my lungs out, to give him the send-off he deserves,” he says. “I just know tears are going to be coming down my face.”

The real Jurgen Klopp: an Athletic special series

• Part 1: ‘The normal guy from the Black Forest’, by Oliver Kay
• Part 2: The powder keg, by Phil Buckingham
• Part 3: The one-man brand, by Caoimhe O’Neill and Andy Jones
• Part 4: Liverpool’s champion, by Simon Hughes
• Part 5: The manager who made Liverpool believe again, by James Pearce

Inside Anfield, George Sephton, the club’s DJ since 1971, was playing All Things Must Pass by the late George Harrison, who grew up a few miles from Anfield — completely indifferent to football, unusually in this city — before finding worldwide fame in The Beatles.

Sunset doesn’t last all evening A mind can blow those clouds away After all this, my love is up and must be leaving It’s not always gonna be this grey

All things must pass All things must pass away.

Nothing Lasts Forever by Echo & The Bunnymen, another Liverpool band, followed soon afterwards, as did Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U. Inside and outside the ground, the pre-match atmosphere seemed sombre — as if focused on the void Klopp is leaving rather than the enormous void he has filled over the past eight and a half years.

That had been the initial tone of one of the farewell videos Liverpool posted on their social media on Saturday — Klopp walking out at an empty Anfield, dressed more formally than usual, scarf in hand, lump in throat, declaring his love for the club. “It’s difficult to say farewell,” he said. “But let’s remember the good times.”

"It’s difficult to say farewell, but let’s remember the good times…" ❤️🥹 pic.twitter.com/Gnlq0MbI2j — Liverpool FC (@LFC) May 18, 2024

And then… a figurative needle scratch and into the upbeat chimes of You To Me Are Everything by The Real Thing, an R&B band from Liverpool’s Toxteth area in the 1970s. And the whole thing suddenly became so much more upbeat: a celebration rather than the sombre mood that seemed to have engulfed sections of the fanbase.

That’s how it felt inside the stadium over the afternoon. Cheerful and optimistic rather than the dewy-eyed outpouring some fans had imagined.

The song that rang out at regular intervals during the game — chanted non-stop in the closing stages, getting louder and louder — was Liverpool’s ode to Klopp to the tune of The Beatles’ I Feel Fine.

Jurgen said to me, you know We’ll win the Premier League, you know He said so I’m in love with him And I feel fine

Klopp’s wife, Ulla, could be seen wiping her eyes in the VIP area. The pair of them will miss this place more than they ever imagined.

She wasn’t the only one feeling emotional. Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk struggled to hold back the tears during the scenes that followed a routine 2-0 victory over Wolves. Vice-captain Trent Alexander-Arnold was in floods. “And I never usually cry,” he said.

But Klopp held it together. He told the crowd he had feared he would be “in pieces” by that point but, instead, he just felt incredibly happy — “about you all, the atmosphere, the game, being a part of this family and about how we celebrate this day”.

Outside the Kop end of Anfield, you pass the statue of the late Bill Shankly.

It will be 50 years in July since Shankly stunned Liverpool’s supporters by announcing his retirement. Shankly’s status among Liverpool managers is unsurpassed no matter what the club has won in the half-century since — even winning the league championship six times and three European Cups under his successor Bob Paisley.

When Shankly arrived in 1959, Liverpool had been marooned in the old Second Division (now Championship ) for five years, a depressed club going nowhere. He energised and transformed the place, building what he called “a bastion of invincibility”. As it says succinctly on the plinth, “He made the people happy.”

So did Klopp. He made them deliriously happy.

From the early 1990s to mid-2010s Anfield was rarely a happy place for long. There were good times — big European nights under Gerard Houllier and Rafael Benitez, a dizzying title challenge under Brendan Rodgers — but there were long periods when the club appeared lost and the fanbase seemed miserable, resentful, struggling to fathom how the empire built over the previous decades had crumbled.

Liverpool’s 30 years of hurt

And then along came Klopp, promising to “turn doubters to believers”. And slowly but surely it happened, the next few years a blur of attacking football and, gradually, winning football.

This wasn’t the attritional football seen under some of his predecessors. This was full-throttle stuff, hurtling their way to the Champions League title in 2019 and then that elusive Premier League title in 2020 in thrilling fashion.

“It’s hard even to put into words,” said Aziz. “But from day one, you knew it was going to be a match made in heaven. It’s a cliche to say that and I know people from outside the world of Liverpool won’t really understand what I mean by it, but it truly has been.”

“He’s a truly inspirational figure,” said Bob Strachan, 72, who was raised on the Shetland Islands but worked and lived in Liverpool in the 1980s and now lives in the Midlands. “Life seems so much better when he’s around.”

Now and again, fans have suggested Klopp deserves a statue outside Anfield — but he isn’t interested in statues. One of his oldest friends, Martin Quast, recalled that when the idea was proposed at his former club Mainz , “Klopp said statues were only good for collecting bird droppings at the top and for dogs peeing on them at the bottom”.

No Klopp statue, then.

What will remain are the memories that echo around this place: that crazy win over Borussia Dortmund in the Europa League quarter-final in 2016, thrilling victories against Manchester City and Roma en route to the Champions League final in 2018, Divock Origi ’s stoppage-time winner against Everton , that astonishing comeback at home to Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final in 2019, the relentless charge that brought their first league title in 30 years, thrashing Manchester United 4-0 and 7-0, resounding victories over Chelsea and Newcastle United this season — everything, really, up to and including Sunday’s farewell.

It wasn’t just Klopp saying goodbye.

Thiago, 33, and Joel Matip , 32, were given a guard of honour and farewell gifts as they prepare to leave when their contracts expire this summer. Likewise, seven members of the backroom staff (Andreas Kornmayer, Ray Haughan, Jack Robinson , John Achterberg, Vitor Matos, Peter Krawietz and Pep Lijnders) who are also leaving.

Ultimately, however, it was about one man. A hush fell over Anfield before he bounded onto the pitch for the final time, wearing a red hoodie with “I’ll Never Walk Alone Again” on the back. He went through the guard of honour once and was happy for Van Dijk to send him back to do it all over again. He seemed to be loving it, demob-happy, a burden off his shoulders.

For the seven and a half minutes he spent in the centre circle with a microphone, it was pure Klopp: off the cuff, unfiltered, heartfelt, passionate.

“People say I turned them from doubters into believers,” he told the supporters. “That’s not true. You did it. Nobody tells you to stop believing. This club is in a better moment than a long time. We have this wonderful stadium, training centre… and you (the fans), the superpower of world football. Wow.”

He turned his thoughts to Feyenoord coach Arne Slot, who will be confirmed as his successor this week. “You welcome the new manager like you welcomed me,” Klopp told the fans. “Change is good. If you go into it with the right attitude, then everything will be fine.”

There was a faint echo of when Sir Alex Ferguson handed the reins to David Moyes at Old Trafford in 2013, thanking Manchester United’s supporters for standing by him during difficult times and telling them, “Your job now is to stand by our new manager.”

But Ferguson didn’t go quite as far as to start chanting his successor’s name.

That’s what Klopp did, hilariously, reappropriating one of his own chants (to the tune of Live is Life by Opus) in honour of the man who will be confirmed as Liverpool’s new manager this week. “Arne Slot, NA NA NA NA NA!” he shouted — and quite tunefully, too… and quite off-message given Slot’s appointment is yet to be confirmed by the club. The supporters took it on instantly.

There followed a few more upbeat messages — “I will never walk alone again”, “I love you to bits” and “You are the best people in the world” — before Klopp was urged for “one last time, go and see your people”.

With that, he ran towards the Kop with his coaches and produced one more flurry of fist-punches, to rapturous acclaim — then produced another flurry on his own, then another, then another, then another, all four sides of the ground. He might want to give it a few days before his next game of padel.

At that point, you wondered where it might end. Was he ever going to go home? Was he going to pick up the microphone again and come over all Wolf of Wall Street? “I’m not f***ing leaving! The show goes on!”

No, he’s leaving. The show really is over.

Klopp will soon leave Merseyside for good. He plans to go to the Champions League final at Wembley on June 1 as a guest of his former club Dortmund and take in some European Championship games in Germany this summer, but he insists he will take a long break before contemplating whether he has another coaching job in him.

He hopes to come back to support Liverpool next season. To put it mildly, he will be a hard act to follow, though he feels he has prepared the ground for Slot in more ways than one.

It wasn’t quite the send-off Klopp had dreamed of back in January when he said he no longer had the energy to go on beyond this season. At that point, still in contention for four trophies, he suggested that “the best memories” of his time at Liverpool were “yet to come”.

They won the Carabao Cup in February, but their season unravelled between mid-March and the end of April. There were echoes of his final months at Mainz, unable to lead them to promotion back to the Bundesliga , and his final season at Dortmund, when his team ended seventh in the Bundesliga and were beaten by Wolfsburg in the DFB-Pokal final.

“Winning today would have been too kitschy, too American,” he said after his final game in charge of Dortmund.

But even without another trophy to add to the Carabao Cup this season, it was a happy ending at Liverpool. “I love how we said goodbye,” he said afterwards. “An absolutely incredible, wonderful time. I love it.”

It summed up something he said when he arrived at Liverpool in October 2015. “It’s not so important what people think when you come in,” he said. “It’s much more important what people think when you leave.”

It also called to mind something else he said upon leaving Dortmund earlier that year. “Trophies and medals, they get put away somewhere in the clubhouse and you forget when exactly it was and who won which trophy when,” he said in 2015. “What’s important is the moment itself, the memory of being there at the game, that you were part of it.

“That’s what it’s all about. The experience.”

(Top photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

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Before joining The Athletic as a senior writer in 2019, Oliver Kay spent 19 years working for The Times, the last ten of them as chief football correspondent. He is the author of the award-winning book Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty, Football’s Lost Genius. Follow Oliver on Twitter @ OliverKay