The International (2009) Movie Review, Cast & Crew, Film Summary

Tom Tykwer tackles the conspiracy thriller flick, mixing up Hitchcock, Frederick Forsyth, Alan Pakula, and Jason Bourne, armed with considerable weaponry: Clive Owen, an unabashedly lefty screenplay by Eric Warren Singer, and superb cinematography by Frank Griebe. Owen plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent and former British cop with a grudge against IBBC, a colossal global bank, which has become in essence arms dealer and purse strings-holder for third world potentates.

With a fellow agent, a contact within the bank, and an Italian magnate-slash-presidential candidate with the goods to blow the bank’s cover are all killed within hours of each-other, Salinger, rendered increasingly desperate, aided by a Manhattan Assistant DA, Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), attempts to locate the bank’s favourite assassin (Brian F. O’Byrne), their only apparent ticket to unravelling the dirty operations of the near-omnipotent organisation.

The result: a riveting thriller that effectively envisions modern high capitalism as the exemplar of feudal prerogative, assassination and bribery envisioned as merely the blunt end of globalised banking. It dispenses thankfully with the pseudo-profundities of Michael Clayton and gets down and dirty with a grandiose shoot-out in the Guggenheim Museum.

The film succumbs to some plodding last act twists, and Watts is miscast, but Owen is at the top of his game and Armin Mueller-Stahl plays with his usual silken effect the bank’s traitorous lieutenant. Tykwer’s clean, moody style imbues the material with far more punch, grace, and grit than it might otherwise have possessed.