The International
Film: The International
Director: Tom Twyker
Starring: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts
Runtime: 92 minutes
Rating: **
A glance at director Tom Tykwer’s C.V. suggests a pretty interesting director: the unique, high-octane and now quintessentially 90s Run Lola Run, and, more recently, a brave attempt at adapting Patrick Suskind’s Perfume. He handles its action sequences efficiently enough, but, unfortunately, The International won’t do Tykwer any favours in a step towards Hollywood, and will only frustrate old Lola fans.
Clive Owen plays gruff, stubbly Brit Louis Salinger who, along with Naomi Watts’ Manhattan D.A. Eleanor Whitman (no, I don’t know why they were both named after famous American writers), is connecting mysterious deaths to a banking monolith called the IBBC. Its involvement in the arms trade and political assassinations unambiguously associate it with the now defunct, real-life BCCI. Sadly, any serious points the film wishes to make about the dangerous, global power of banks, so relevant in these times, become lost in the characters who struggle to provoke believability or interest, and in the clunky dialogue.
It all comes to a head when, 40 minutes in, the plot moves to New York. In the course of tracing a hitman, a long, machine-gun shoot-out ensues, and Tykwer takes full advantage of its location: The Guggenheim Museum. The sequence wouldn’t feel out of place in a Bourne film, the only problems being that, until now, we’ve been watching a political thriller – Clive Owen is not an amnesiac superspy, but an Interpol agent. As well as the blatant Bourne influence, the film is very post-24 – Salinger sleeps less than Jack Bauer and is just as angry and determined.
Dismal preview screenings pushed the film’s release date forward 6 months to allow for re-shoots, probably including the extremely tagged on ending in Istanbul. This identity crisis shows: its humourless attempt to be an issue-film seems dishonest amidst its action-movie clichés.
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