The International (2009)

The Interpol Agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) and his partner are investigating the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC) in a joint operation with the District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) from Manhattan in a two hundred million dollars illegal business of weapons trading. They schedule a meeting with an insider informer from IBBC at the Central Station in Berlin; however his partner is mysteriously killed after the encounter. Salinger finds the identity of the informer when he sees that the Vice President of Acquisitions André Clement (Georges Bigot) had died in a car accident. Salinger and Whitman head to Milan where they meet the politician Umberto Calvini (Luca Giorgio Barbareschi), who is great manufacturer of arms, and he explains that IBBC is interested in buying the missile guiding system that he produces in his factory. When Calvini is murdered by a sniper in a political rally, Salinger and Whitman head to New York following the killer and later to Istanbul, and disclose a scheme of arms supply and destabilization of governments to make their nations slaves of debt. Further, the bank is protected by legal systems and only if Salinger crosses the line he might bring some justice to the corrupt system.

"The International" is a surprisingly effective blockbuster thriller. I had lower expectations with this movie, but I really liked it. The complex story of corruption and greedy has flaws, but holds the attention of the viewer until the last scene. The way Louis Salinger easily travels to many countries is strange, since we simple mortals need documentation, money, reservations, connections in the airports, but his character has no problem even when he is chased by the police. In Guggenheim, the always effective police force of the movies takes a long time to come to the place and arrives only after the shooting. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Trama International" ("International Plot")

Fmovies: STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

As others have stated, the current banking scandals have cast a very grim light on bankers and the banking industry in general, and so The International is, if nothing else, a very timely and relevant thriller that plays on modern fears and frustrations. How it didn't do better at the box office with this in mind (maybe it was the recession? Hah, how ironic would that be, a film failed by the corrupt industry it's trying to expose?) is a mystery, but that it manages to be a genuinely intelligent and absorbing thriller anyway is a credit to it.

We have here a polished effort, slick, stylish and glossy and carried out with an accomplished flair that sets it a cut above some. In the lead role as the intrepid Interpol agent on a deadly trail of murder and corruption, Clive Owen continues to improve as an actor and has fine support, including the likes of Naomi Watts and Armin Mueheller Stall, carrying the story along as it gathers pace. The big down point, though, is that at the expense of this intelligence in the script comes a decidedly dull feeling to the film in parts, with maybe too much talking and too little action, which is counter productive to the riveting attention it's trying to demand. But this does improve towards the end and while there are some flaws, there are certainly more plusses. ***

"The International" is about an evil bank and begs the question; do these fricken things come in any other way? It's a fairly interesting story that got a major boost from current events last September once we learned that banks actually do have shadier dealings than expected. Only the ironic part now is will people be willing or even able to pay to see this movie. My recommendation would be wait for the DVD. Director Tim Tykwer ("Run Lola Run") does a decent directing job and for a while "The International" crackles with suspense but soon the interesting idea posed by the script, by Eric Singer, just fizzles out.

Clive Owen plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent whose been trailing the business practices of one of the biggest banks in the world, the IBBC, for what seems like years. Just when he manages to find witnesses, they either end up dead or manipulated into silence. He teams up with Manhattan District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) to bring the bank to justice but she's getting added pressure to shut this whole investigation down because the two are coming up with next to no evidence. The bank's trail of money, used for everything from arms deals to murder, sends Salinger and Whitman globe-trotting from Berlin to Milan to New York to Istanbul but one dead end could shut the case down for good.

I'm usually not very cognizant of camera shots so the fact that i'm saying Tykwer really makes you think about perfect camera movement and angles really says a lot for what he does here. Not only does he start the suspense up early with strong verbal encounters/hard stares between characters but the way he frames and pans along the beautiful design of places like the Guggenheim Museum and the IBBC headquarters or the ancient buildings, narrow, bustling streets, and rooftops of Instanbul is fantastic. Nearly every scene has a lively visual quality. His one mistake actually comes with the movie's one big action sequence. It's a bloody shootout inside the Guggenheim but it just seems messy and hard to make out, a Paul Greengrass imitation without the exciting energy of a "Bourne" movie.

The screenplay by Singer is more than partly to blame. His story starts out well, catching our attention with the bank's deceptive and shady practices and building up a healthy dose of paranoia as well. The problem is the screenplay then lets itself off far too easily. Instead of focusing on how the bank creates slaves-to-debt and how the whole process works, the movie just vaguely and complicatedly brushes over those issues in favor of lazy, generic plotting. Salinger and Whitman soon find that their best option is pinning a murder on IBBC, just you would think a major bank could do better than hiring such an easily track-able killer. And where the movie really goes wrong is the conclusion, which doesn't go into how the bank is actually taken down as much as it just satisfies the audience's need for bloodlust. You can tell that no one knew how to end this thing.

Casting Clive Owen is a good idea. He brings a determined, serious demeanor to Salinger though with the type of roles he has played recently, you wonder why this guy turned down James Bond. He seems like a natural for it. The rest of the cast struggles with poor character development. Naomi Watts gets a role so useless that it could have easily been played by my grandma. Armin Mueller Stahl shows up as a former communist whose lost his way and now works with the bank as a cons

The International fmovies. The International (2009)

We can't expect every Tom Tykwer film to be as inventive or intense as Run Lola Run or The Princess and the Warrior, and The International feels almost like a breather, an intentional turn at a conventional film. It's an espionage and high stakes international drama with guns and deceit and a pair of very distinctly good good guys played by Clive Owen (brilliantly) and Naomi Watts (unconvincingly...probably just miscast). And overall it's completely enjoyable and slick, well paced, and beautifully filmed, of course.

The plot is one of those sprawling, behind-the-scenes conspiracy, third world, big money scenarios that must have shades of truth, or lots of truth, but gets simplified into a handful of bad guys and a parade of exotic locales (including the inevitable Third World warlord who is an intelligent and willing pawn in the whole game). What I mean is, the plot almost doesn't matter in the details, though it's interesting, and makes you think and worry a little about the world we live in. It's more how the heroes unfold the facts of the plot, against the odds, the clock ticking, that make the movie good. If you liked the Bourne movies (which are as a whole probably faster and more edgy) or Syriana (which is actually kind of similar in feel overall, Clooney substituted for Owen), this will really suit you.

And there is a Tykwer twist now and then, a camera with unusual fluidity, or a scene that gets replayed and rethought. Of course, the hugely complicated shootout in the Guggenheim is a masterpiece of excessive and brilliant kinetic filming. For an amazing short video on the building of the sets for this shoot (yes, it wasn't at the real Gug), go to www.firstshowing.net and type guggenheim tykwer.

In all? The best of it is worth the worst of it. A tightly made and not overly preposterous dip into a well stocked pond.

The International provides a breath of fresh air to fans of thrillers. It is a thriller film that rarely comes out of a big studio these days. It is a film more in style of Hitchcock with the mystery being the film's guiding force rather than frenetically stitched together action scenes. The Bourne Trilogy touched base on this type of thing, but still resorted to a largely conventional plot. While being an enjoyable and smarter-than-usual series of action movies they were nowhere near as intricate than their source material, which really dove into some seriously dark territory plot-wise with things that big budget thriller films almost never dare to touch.

This film does just that type of thing. It presents, as the villain, an institution that is pervasive in the world and most peoples lives. We deal with it almost everyday and we need to as it holds one of the things that we need everyday - money. From an observer viewpoint on this type of relationship it is easy to see which side has great power over the other and like all power, this one can also be abused. Perhaps this plot can turn people off since they refuse to believe that something that they trust with literally everything they've got, could be so untrustworthy. Or perhaps they've never seen or heard about such a thing before so therefore it can't be true. Either way, it is self-imposed mental limitation which will doom someone to eventually liking only one type of movie and/or story. Movies and stories, at their core, are presenting new ideas and patterns and The International doesn't do that with spectacular action scenes, but with it's fresh plot.

Crooks usually rob banks, but who gets robbed if the bank is the crook? That is the film's central question and the answer provided is also a bit more complex than could be expected. The path the answer doesn't always move at a breakneck pace nor are many of the answers provided fully satisfactory.

In addition to the winding plot the film features a spectacular shootout that results in a world class art museum getting trashed. It's a bit of the old action movie formula that almost never gets old, but overall the movie is an Anti-Formula to the every Hollywood Action Movie Formula. --- 9/10

BsCDb Classification: 13+ --- violence

I'm a fan of German director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, The Princess And The Warrior, Heaven, Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer). The story seemed like a different direction for him, so this was a must see for me.

First, the only problem I had with the film is the screenplay, some contrived lines, especially in the third act, stick out. The dialogue really tries to force the theme down the viewers throat. Other than that, everything else was top notch. The way the story is set up and fleshed out was engrossing to me. I like a film that lets the viewer figure it out for themselves. It's got a classic mystery set up, where the viewer is in the shoes of the protagonist, we get to figure it out along with him as he unravels it.

Clive Owen and Naomi Watts were decent, but not really stretching there acting legs here. The cinematography and locations were beautiful, filmed in a neo-noirish blue/grey color palette with lots of wide angle shots of the characters dwarfed by the urban architecture. The shootout was very well done and more realistic and grittier than the usual action set piece.

It actually reminded me of a Michael Mann film.