International, The – A Movie Review
Interpol Agent Louis Salinger and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman are determined to bring to justice one of the world’s most powerful banks. Uncovering myriad and reprehensible illegal activities, Salinger and Whitman follow the money from Berlin to Milan to New York to Istanbul. Finding themselves in a high-stakes chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk as their targets will stop at nothing — even murder — to continue financing terror and war.
Genres: Action/Adventure, Drama and Thriller; Running Time: 1 hr. 58 min.; Release Date: February 13th, 2009 (wide); MPAA Rating: R for some sequences of violence and language.
Starring: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ulrich Thomsen, Brian O Byrne
Directed by: Tom Tykwer
I finally watched this on TIVO from Amazon Sunday evening. It was a bit better than I expected, but I’m glad I didn’t spend the full theatre price to see it.
It is formulaic with some evil guys who run a bank, and create debt to control countries. No surprise there, and fairly easy to pull off. We don’t view bankers as heros much anymore.
Naomi Watts character was a bit stiff, and her dialogue very predictable and forced. Clive Owen played his part well, as he usually does. One of the holes seems to be that the characters were able to travel to far distant reaches of the world in mere hours. I’d love to have their corporate jets.
I’m usually not very aware 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.
(1 votes, average: 6.00 out of 10)
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