Today’s ho-hum new financial thriller needs a stimulus package. You’d think otherwise because, at least at first glance, “The International” seems to take on a timely topic. It also stars two decent actors and comes from the director behind the vigorous German actioner “Run, Lola, Run.”
But Clive Owen and Naomi Watts play rather generic movie types in helmer Tom Tykwer’s predictable genre piece about an evil global bank. The screenplay by Eric Warren Singer would seem to have selected the right villain at the right time — given the current climate of banking industry failures and foreclosures. But the picture was conceived and produced well before last fall’s economic meltdown. Rather, the fictional story looks backward, barely concealing its origins in the Bank of Credit & Commerce International scandal of the 1980s and early ’90s.
For the film, they’ve changed one letter in the acronym. Run by the Machiavellian Jonas Skarssen (Ulrich Thomsen) in “consultation” with former Communist fixer Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and a hired assassin (Brian F. O’Byrne), the nefarious IBBC dabbles in missile sales and warmongering as a way to manipulate rival governmental factions and run up debt.
From the opening sequence, people start turning up dead as New York Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Watts) and an Interpol agent pursue the case. The dogged Louis Salinger (Owen) is a former Scotland Yard investigator with a personal stake in wanting to get to the bottom of the criminal conspiracy. The corporation’s exploits lead them on a hunt set worldwide, with stops in Germany, Luxembourg, New York, Milan and Turkey as the conflicts in the Middle East and on continental Africa are impacted.
A heart-stopping action set piece in Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum is the only memorably exciting thing here. It takes creative advantage of the unique architectural interior of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous work for a long, bloody gunfight with epic property destruction.
Otherwise, the script fails to take advantage of Owen’s limey smolder and gives the too-often bland Watts no character distinctiveness to help her. The mature, attractive headliners also have no romantic subplot to explore, probably as an attempt to avoid movie cliché. They are all business. But without lust or a better narrative to profit from, the standard good-cop-versus-bad-
Quick Info
‘The International’
2 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl
Director: Tom Tykwer
Rated R for some sequences of violence and language.
Running Time: 116 minutes
