Ever since that great director from the silent film era, Fritz Lang, practically invented the espionage genre with his 1928 classic “Spies,” world cinema has seen its share of excellent spy movies come and go. Alfred Hitchcock would dip his hand into the espionage water when he directed 1934’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” thus propelling modern-day cinema into a new world of deceit and under-handed deals, all perpetrated by film characters that movie audiences are never quite sure which side of good or evil the film’s characters are on at any given time.
That type of plot ambiguity worked quite well for Hitchcock when he was creating cinematic masterpieces such as “Saboteur” and “Notorious”, but when directors that don’t have as much talent as the great Hitchcock once had in building up tension during a movie that is almost palpable, that movie usually stalls out mid-way through the film itself. I’m sorry to say that director Tom Tykwer, who directed “The International”, does not have the talent to ratchet up the tension in this movie to rank anywhere near stellar spy movies such as “North by Northwest” or Orson Welles’ “The Third Man”.
The problem with “The International” starts with a rather tepid and meandering script penned by writer Eric Singer, whose only claim to fame before writing the screenplay for “The International” was for being involved with MTV’s “Aeon Flux” animated series. Espionage thrillers live or die on the audience’s ability and desire to thrust itself fully into the machinations behind the motives of the film’s lead characters to unravel a great mystery as the film progresses.
However, in “The International”, lead actor Clive Owen seems to be barely concerned himself that an international bank called the “IBBC” is creating wars in foreign countries just so the bank can collect an enormous interest debt when said foreign country develops a need for a massive loan to begin their war efforts, including building up a massive weapon arsenal that will obviously cost billions of dollars, thus insuring that the IBBC will be collecting millions of dollars in interest alone.
The only reason Owen’s character, Louis Salinger, is involved in bringing down the executives at IBBC at all is because his best friend and co-worker as a fellow agent in Interpol is killed on the streets of Germany by an unknown assailant, and Salinger begins following the trail of the killer as the under-whelming plot scenario gradually unravels and the slow-paced film progresses. That’s not to say that there are no exciting scenes at all during this movie, quite the contrary. As I was viewing the Blu-Ray version of “The International”, I was quite pleased with the way director Tykwer was able to deliver an action-packed gun shoot-out in the Guggenheim museum with unbelievable assurance as his camera panned up to the glass ceiling and we see three gunmen shooting at Salinger who is four levels down, ducking in and out of the pillars holding up the rounded floors of this magnificent building. During this same sequence, the museum’s main exhibition of video art is being displayed on all parts of the main floor where the gun battle is ensuing, thus creating a very exhilarating ambience during the shoot-out as all gunmen involved in the battle run for cover of the video screens, all the while getting shot in the head, torso and legs as the video screens continue to play out over the gunmen’s death sequences, caused by Salinger shooting them all with his trusty AK-47.
But just including one great action scene does little to help this movie’s wobbly plot contrivances along, and the less-than-stellar acting ability of Naomi Watts as a District Attorney only adds to the overall amateurish look of this disappointing movie. Watts seems only to show up in this film to allow the audience to sympathize with her film character’s inability to get involved with bringing down the IBBC on corruption charges because she does not want the head of the IBBC to come looking after her and her family with a half-dozen hit men in tow with murder on their minds, even though as acting District Attorney, that IS her job.
During the film’s assassination sequence in which the elected president of Italy is shot at during an outdoor speech, the film still moves along in a less than exciting fashion, and this sequence does nothing to get the audience involved in what is happening on-screen. The director does not build up the required tension that movie audiences need to get fully involved in the emotional bedlam that would ensue if the president of Italy is indeed gunned down to death in such a horrible way. Instead, the assassination sequence is only inserted into the film’s plot as a contrivance to push the movie to it’s ultimate conclusion: That globalization of politics and international banking will only lead to the destruction of free and democratic will.
During our current time of economic devastation and political globalization incurred by our current U.S. president, this alarming realization should certainly resonate with the vast movie-going public. But this movie fails to make its point in a solid fashion because of it’s barely visible plotline and it’s incoherent cast of characters who only inspire the audience to look at their watches to see when this mess of an espionage movie will finally end. I believe that audiences of today do have a thirst to watch a spy movie that mirrors what is actually going on in the fast-paced world of political and financial globalization today. Unfortunately, “The International” is definitely NOT that movie.
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