Dir. Tom Tykwer, US/Germany/UK, 2009, 118 mins
Cast: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl
Review by Richard Mellor
After Pierce Brosnan hung up his tux, Clive Owen was a front-runner to play James Bond and went head-to-head with Daniel Craig in a battle of the heartthrobs, before being pipped at the post by ol' Blue Eyes. Since then DC has shown off his 36-pack, grunted a lot and been congratulated for making 007 more 'cerebral'. But here's Clive's chance to prove them all wrong. In The International he plays a renegade, obsessive Interpol agent, who's more scared of injustice than death and who gets to run a lot. This is after all a Tom Tykwer movie from the man, who demonstrated his penchant for lots of running about in his breakthrough movie Run, Lola, Run.
Comparisons aren't actually that simple. Interpol agents are really spies who pass intelligence onto police and Governments. It's a licence to spill, not kill. They don't seem as sartorial as MI5 agents, either. Clive's Agent Salinger wears a rather geeky mac and plain tie throughout. But the enemy remains the same – shadowy, wealthy corporations with world-crippling aims and eyes and ears everywhere. So too does the recipe for stopping them – take one renegade agent and mix in his defiance of bosses and disregard for personal safety in direct correlation to the growth of untended stubble on his chin.
And so it pans out in Tykwer's truly international thriller. Taking in locations in Berlin, Milan, New York and the Italian Lakes, Tykwer's film has Salinger taking on the BCCI, a bank which finances terrorists and coups. As the film pulsatingly begins, Clive's partner is subtly assassinated by the BCCI in the middle of a crowded square. With help from New York DEA Eleanor Whitman (Watts), our hero sets about establishing his foes' guilt and after a slow start, life is soon a heady blur of wire taps, murdered moles and political pressure to ditch the investigation.
Clive laughs his cruel laugh, flashes those cruelly perfect teeth and then ploughs on regardless, machinelike in his dogged pursuit. The danger becomes thrillingly real in the Big Apple, the setting for what is easily the best chunk of the movie. Having tracked down BCCI's hitman, Clive and his new NYPD buddies follow the shooter on foot in a giddy, fast-paced scene on the Manhattan streets. The baddie enters the Guggenheim Museum for a covert meeting, but spots his trackers. Cue a 10-minute shoot-out, as half a dozen BCCI assailants materialise from among the Impressionist artworks.
It's fantastic, how-the-hell-did-they-film-that stuff. The enemies duck and fire at each other across the Guggenheim's ramped spiral hallway. Civilians scream tremulously as million-dollar artworks comes crashing down. There's a brief, hilarious pause as a terrified tourist's phone bleeps off during an impasse, causing him to apologise fearfully. Then it's back to more exhilarating hellfire and brimstone. Eventually Clive makes it out... and from then on it all seems rather dull, as though The International peaked too early. Stand-out scenes are all very well, but not if they eclipse the finale.
That denouement, scenically taking place in and then on the rooftops of Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, is partly undermined by the lack of a scary, repellent villain. Bank boss Skarssen (Thomsen) is only slightly more smarmy than an ordinary suit, and about as reprehensible as the fat banker from the Nationwide adverts. He's not even nearly worth all Clive's blood and bristle. Nor are his evil associates: Armin Mueller-Stahl's wicked old Communist turns out to be a teddy bear with a conscience, and his right-hand-man and legal eagle is none other than Patrick Baladi from TV's Mistresses .
Girly villains aren't the only problem. Throughout,The International feels skeletal with little underpinning the cross-continental chase. There's a brief summary of how Salinger's former agency job in London was lost but no sign of a private life. And there's no hint of romance save for the odd stare between Salinger and Whitman. In fact, Watts' character is so superfluous she's banished to the sidelines for the last 20 minutes. Time that might have been spent on building her character is instead devoted to establishing the BCCI's thoroughly modern evil, with plotting via Skype conversations, support of corrupt African Governments and dastardly manipulation of international debt funds.
Owen seems a shade awkward and wooden as the moral crusader and he's not helped by some truly laughable lines: heavy-handed guff such as "Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it" and "Justice is an illusion". While trying to be dramatic, such proverbial grandeur is in fact unintentionally funny – much funnier, indeed, than Duplicity , Clive's real comedy with Julia Roberts, which is due for release soon. Oh, the wicked irony! Overwrought statements like these confirm that The International lacks the authoritative punch of Bourne films, or indeed the lustre of Bond movies.
All that being said though, this ain't bad. Rattling along, it's attractively shot – with a greyish, '70s-style sheen – and it does have that stand-out shoot-out. Clive might not be exchanging one-liners with Judi Dench, but he can still cut a mean dash in a slick flick.
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