Review: The International
by John Nolte“Friday the 13th” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic” are what they are. You’re either up for that kind of thing or you aren’t. No review is likely to have any effect, so I chose to screen “The International,” hoping to pass along the good news that there was a smart, adult oriented sleeper to catch over the weekend, but instead found myself wishing I’d gone to get my Jason on.
Two appealing stars in the form of Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, enough exotic locations for two James Bond films and one very well staged shoot out in the Guggenheim museum just isn’t enough to cut through a confusing, lifeless plot and lack of spark between the two leads. Let me then suggest a second screening of “Taken” for your weekend viewing pleasure.
Owen plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent obsessed with taking down the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC), a multi-national corporation hip deep in arms dealing, specifically in third world countries where it hopes to gain political influence through the holding of debt. One of Salinger’s few allies is Eleanor (Watts), who works out of the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan where IBBC’s main money laundering branch is located.
Eleanor is happily married with a child, Salinger’s single, rough, a little haunted, and very alone. What they do share is a commitment to bring down IBBC and a suspicion that all the discouragement thrown their way by their superiors might be further proof of that institution’s enormous power and influence.
After a colleague is assassinated during an attempt to turn an IBBC executive into an informant, Salinger and Eleanor follow a series of clues to a former East German Stasi agent Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl), and the bank’s stand-by assassin for hire, Jonas (Ulrich Thomsen).They hope to turn one or the other into an informant in order to build a case they can prosecute, but each step forward only seems to lead to an even bigger hornet’s nest of killers and dead ends.
Unfortunately, the whole ordeal of sitting through the film is a dead end. Any chance at a lively, pulse-pounder is cut off at the knees even before it begins because the antagonist is a bank building and there are absolutely no stakes. Were the IBBC baddies up to something in particular that was destined to bring some kind of chaos down on the world, that would be one thing, but they aren’t. So the stakes are that if IBBC isn’t stopped The World Will Stay Exactly As It Is Now.
There’s no ticking clock, no master plan in need of foiling, which means there’s no tension whatsoever. Also lacking is a place for the Naomi Watts’ character. Other than an exposition extraction device so we can learn about Salinger’s uninteresting and clichéd history, she awkwardly jumps in and out of the story without any central purpose.
And this is a shame. Watts is an outstanding actress and I had hoped she’d spark with Owen. But for whatever mad reason, the script refuses to let even a hint of romantic or sexual tension into the relationship. Through no fault of these two fine actors, chemistry simply isn’t allowed. The relationship is built on a respect that borders on clinical and crosses over into dull.
The only actor given a memorable moment is Mueller-Stahl (working again with Watts after last year’s far superior “Eastern Promises“) as a former Commie turned capitalist baddie who feels his age and is starting to regret where the choices of his long life might finally place him at death. Give a fine actor like this some good dialogue and you can’t go wrong.
A lot of effort went into the look and design of “The International.” Every location, like the Guggenheim, is an architectural wonder. This is a beautiful film to look at, just not very much fun to watch.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
25 Comments
This is a beautiful film to look at, just not very much fun to watch.
With the exception of Kubrick's work, movies like that tend to irritate the hell out of me.
An evil "bank" plotting in the Middle East? My God.
Yahoo has this terrifying ad for this: Bloody red letters scrawl themselves across your screen reading "The International Must Be Stopped". I thought I had picked up a virus.
"Any chance at a lively, pulse-pounder is cut off at the knees even before it begins because the antagonist is a bank building and there are absolutely no stakes.
My exact thought! When I saw the trailer, the one thing I asked was – where's the human connection? There was no personal reason why Owens and Watts were so desperate to bring down this bank – so I couldn't relate to them in a personal way. I'm not a bank, I'm a person. I need a human connection to be interested in a film.
Another thing – this trailer got my goat with yet another 'evil capitalist' sermon. Jeesh! Hollywood can stuff that sermon in the same hole with their other sermons, the ones that go 'every American soldier is a psychopath' and 'every Catholic priest is a pedophile'.
Too bad, I absolutely love Run Lola Run, The Princess and The Warrior, and Perfume. I'll still check it out when it comes to DVD due to my fondness of Tom Tykwer movies, plus, I'm a sucker for movies with great cinematography.
I am a huge Naomi Watts fan, and also like Clive Owen, but I shied away from this film. Even from the promos you could tell Watts didn't have much of a role.
Oddly, I sort of concluded that — as you suggest — the best film option this week would be to see Taken again.
(I also think the promos for the Owen/Julia Roberts film look very appealing.)
I thought that meant the Socialist International — so I thought, yeah, stopping them would be a good idea.
Julia Roberts and appealing. Never thought I'd see those two words together.
I'm not much of a Julia Roberts fan, either, having seen only a few of her films. But that was my reaction.
Now all Hollywood needs is a movie where the villain is an American soldier who is also a pedophile priest and evil capitalist and their journey to utter irrelevancy will be complete.
I had the misfortune of watching Notting Hill a while back… when Roberts and Grant begin their smirk-off in the "we really should hook up" scene, I felt like praying for death.
I find her to be completely horrid as an actress. She's lifeless. She has no depth. She has one trick (the smirk). Yuck.
Ugh, I'm tired of this silly liberal notion that arms dealers, politicians and banks are all in cahoots starting and continuing wars all over the place because they're so freakin' profitable.
The reality is that Arms manufacture and sale is not anywhere near the top when it comes to profitable enterprises … heck, the entire US domestic firearms industry is only about $2billion total (that's spread across several dozen small companies) …. McDonald's makes about $12billion a year.
So globally I expect you'll find a continuation of the same trend, fast food is probably several orders of magnitude more profitable than contriving wars so you can sell Kalashnikovs to brown people. War in the third world is not profitable enough to bend the politicians of the world into stirring up more of it.
Anyway, its just such hypocrisy for these rich hollweirdos to keep making tons of "capitalism is evil" movies.
Quite frankly, Zundfolge, some of these people think McDonald's is a conspiracy too.
"hoping to pass along the good news that there was a smart, adult oriented sleeper to catch over the weekend"
I can only assume you haven't seen the teaser on TV, then. The first time I saw it, I could see it was yet one more leftist anti-capitalism propaganda flick, and that there was no chance I'd watch it, even on HBO.
That's some smirk though. The hood of my dad's 70 Chrysler Imperial wasn't as big as her mouth.
I saw through Notting Hill on a date, long ago. I remember it quite fondly, because the next date was to see "The Other Sister" which might be the most pretentious Lifetime-esque schlock ever shown in a cinema.
Thank goodness I'm not the only one who feels that way. I remember when she got the Oscar for "Erin Brokovich" I was floored. She sucked in that movie. I mean really, who buys Julia Roberts in those ridiculous outfits? The clothes wore her throughout the whole film. Don't even get me started on her "acting…"
((unrelated note. Love the "edit" feature of these new comments. I caught a typo and was able to fix it– nice that))
My daughter is a huge fan of Owens but most movies I've seen him in are disasters. Which is really too bad since he is one of a very few actors who are actually men and not some metrosexual.
Julia Roberts, appealing?
Julia Roberts? The same Julia Robers with the cackling laugh and horse-teeth grin?
Yuck.
I got sucker punched by movies so many times that I had stopped going. Then I found John Nolte. Finally, a reviewer who reviews the movie instead of promoting propaganda or ideology. When Nolte reviews a movie, you know what it's REALLY about. I had toyed with the idea of seeing this one because I like Clive Owen, but I'll pass and save myself ten bucks in addition to a dentist's bill from grinding my teeth.
"Now all Hollywood needs is a movie where the villain is an American soldier who is also a pedophile priest and evil capitalist and their journey to utter irrelevancy will be complete."
It's probably in the can. But in case it isn't, I'll help out with the plot: Have the American soldier villain a white naturally, serial killing, pedophile chaplain stationed in Iraq with the occupying American army. While there, he conspires with the Israelis to set up a corporation to steal oil from gentle Shiite Muslims. Sexual tension can be introduced when he falls in love with a 13 year old boy AND his fourteen year old brother.
I went into this really wanting to like it a lot – unfortunately after a cool European espionage start it lost its way.
Vic
Did anyone else stifle a chuckle when they saw the trailer for this thing before better movies? I found Owen's earnestness hilarious as he says ominously, "There has to be a way to bring down this bank." The irony of that trailer against various banks collapsing all around the US was pretty amusing.
How original, Germans as bad guys. Wow never seen that before. Um There is a great movie on TCM today….I think I'll see that instead.
I could never get into this movie just because of the ridiculous plot. I understand banks are the bad guys right now, and I'm sure some suit in Hollywood is slapping air-5's for jumping in front of the zeitgeist, but the logic is astounding. I'm a bank, my goal is to maximize profits, so I maintain teams of international assassins and gunmen? Everyone knows gunbunnies are nonrevenue generating; they'd be the first department trimmed in any corporate cost-cutting.
I also just kept geting knocked out of the plot when ever they attempted to reveal the plot. As a matter of economics, it just didn't work. Debt has no intrinsic value, but in this movie its the key to global power. "control the debt and you control the world" or something like that is said by one the baddies. Whoever he is, he never passed macroeconomics.
Thank you! I have never gotten what's so great about Julia Roberts. Or "Pretty Woman." Maybe that's why I just don't get her. That movie never made sense to me and for the life of me I can't understand why so many of my girlfriends love it.
Just saw "The International," and its anti-capitalistic undertones were hardly subtle. I was remarkably underwhelmed. It would have been much more realistic if the IBBC were portrayed as the UN…
You must be logged in to post a comment.