The International (2009)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Tom Tykwer

Writer (WGA):

Eric Singer (written by)

Release Date:

13 February 2009 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

They control your money. They control your government. They control your life. And everybody pays.

Plot:

An Interpol agent attempts to expose a high-profile financial institution's role in an international arms dealing ring.

Plot Keywords:

Bank | Interpol | New York | District Attorney | Istanbul

Cast

Clive Owen	...	Louis Salinger
Naomi Watts	...	Eleanor Whitman
Armin Mueller-Stahl	...	Wilhelm Wexler
Ulrich Thomsen	...	Jonas Skarssen
Brian F. O'Byrne	...	The Consultant
Michel Voletti	...	Viktor Haas
Patrick Baladi	...	Martin White
Jay Villiers	...	Francis Ehames
Fabrice Scott	...	Nicholai Yeshinski
Haluk Bilginer	...	Ahmet Sunay
Luca Barbareschi	...	Umberto Calvini (as Luca Giorgio Barbareschi)
Alessandro Fabrizi	...	Inspector Alberto Cerutti
Felix Solis	...	Detective Iggy Ornelas
Jack McGee	...	Detective Bernie Ward
Nilaja Sun	...	Detective Gloria Hubbard

MPAA:

Rated R for some sequences of violence and language.

Runtime:

118 min

Country:

USA | Germany | UK

Language:

English | Italian | French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS

Certification:

USA:R (certificate #44264) | Germany:16 | UK:15 | South Korea:18 | Ireland:15A | Finland:K-15 | Australia:MA | Japan:PG-12 | Portugal:M/12 | Norway:15 | Sweden:15 | New Zealand:R16 | Philippines:PG-13 (MTRCB) | Singapore:NC-16 | Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud) | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario) | Singapore:PG (edited version) | India:A (cinema release) | Mexico:B15 | Argentina:13 | Netherlands:12 | Netherlands:16 | Canada:13+ (Quebec)

Filming Locations:

59th Street Bridge, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Relativity Media

Trivia:

The film was inspired by the BCCI, or Bank of Credit & Commerce International, banking scandal, which took place throughout the 80s and into the early 90s.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Salinger and Whitman are on the roof and they talk about how the (second) shooter made the shot, the camera "transforms" into the scope. During this "scene" you can see how the two shots are shot. In the scenes before, they clearly show that the two shots go through the pillar, but in the "scopescene" the woman behind the pillar isn't hurt.

Quotes:

Louis Salinger: Sometimes the hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn... I'm the one you burn.

Movie Connections:

Features Asylum (2002)

Soundtrack:

Wir Setzen Uns Mit Traenen Nieder

Exquisitely shot but problematic

"The International" is about an evil bank and begs the question; do these fricken things come in any other way? It's a fairly interesting story that got a major boost from current events last September once we learned that banks actually do have shadier dealings than expected. Only the ironic part now is will people be willing or even able to pay to see this movie. My recommendation would be wait for the DVD. Director Tim Tykwer ("Run Lola Run") does a decent directing job and for a while "The International" crackles with suspense but soon the interesting idea posed by the script, by Eric Singer, just fizzles out.

Clive Owen plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent whose been trailing the business practices of one of the biggest banks in the world, the IBBC, for what seems like years. Just when he manages to find witnesses, they either end up dead or manipulated into silence. He teams up with Manhattan District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) to bring the bank to justice but she's getting added pressure to shut this whole investigation down because the two are coming up with next to no evidence. The bank's trail of money, used for everything from arms deals to murder, sends Salinger and Whitman globe-trotting from Berlin to Milan to New York to Istanbul but one dead end could shut the case down for good.

I'm usually not very cognizant 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.

The screenplay by Singer is more than partly to blame. His story starts out well, catching our attention with the bank's deceptive and shady practices and building up a healthy dose of paranoia as well. The problem is the screenplay then lets itself off far too easily. Instead of focusing on how the bank creates slaves-to-debt and how the whole process works, the movie just vaguely and complicatedly brushes over those issues in favor of lazy, generic plotting. Salinger and Whitman soon find that their best option is pinning a murder on IBBC, just you would think a major bank could do better than hiring such an easily track-able killer. And where the movie really goes wrong is the conclusion, which doesn't go into how the bank is actually taken down as much as it just satisfies the audience's need for bloodlust. You can tell that no one knew how to end this thing.

Casting Clive Owen is a good idea. He brings a determined, serious demeanor to Salinger though with the type of roles he has played recently, you wonder why this guy turned down James Bond. He seems like a natural for it. The rest of the cast struggles with poor character development. Naomi Watts gets a role so useless that it could have easily been played by my grandma. Armin Mueller Stahl shows up as a former communist whose lost his way and now works with the bank as a consultant or something. He gets one well written scene, going man-o-e-man-o with Owen but otherwise not that many impressions are made by the cast. Unfortunately for the movie, try as Tykwer and Owen might, it also fails to make much of an impression as well.