User reviews

I was persuaded by my brother to see this film. I wanted to see another one but since he was visiting I agreed with his choice, and was surprised to find myself liking the film very much. OK, the script could be a little better, but the direction and acting were very good, even down to the supporting players such as the actors who portrayed the two NYC cops who assist the main character, Interpol agent Sallinger (Clive Owens), once the story moved to NYC. What I particularly liked was the way the story was told cinematically rather than through a lot of verbose dialogue. It seemed to me like a Bourne thriller for adults. No kinetic hand-held camera action, but smooth visually appealing cinematic exposition the way Hitchcock did it in his prime. Even the closing credits were used effectively to give a rather downbeat dénouement to the film.

In short, an entertaining movie that alleviated the February blues.

The International (2009)

We can't expect every Tom Tykwer film to be as inventive or intense as Run Lola Run or The Princess and the Warrior, and The International feels almost like a breather, an intentional turn at a conventional film. It's an espionage and high stakes international drama with guns and deceit and a pair of very distinctly good good guys played by Clive Owen (brilliantly) and Naomi Watts (unconvincingly...probably just miscast). And overall it's completely enjoyable and slick, well paced, and beautifully filmed, of course.

The plot is one of those sprawling, behind-the-scenes conspiracy, third world, big money scenarios that must have shades of truth, or lots of truth, but gets simplified into a handful of bad guys and a parade of exotic locales (including the inevitable Third World warlord who is an intelligent and willing pawn in the whole game). What I mean is, the plot almost doesn't matter in the details, though it's interesting, and makes you think and worry a little about the world we live in. It's more how the heroes unfold the facts of the plot, against the odds, the clock ticking, that make the movie good. If you liked the Bourne movies (which are as a whole probably faster and more edgy) or Syriana (which is actually kind of similar in feel overall, Clooney substituted for Owen), this will really suit you.

And there is a Tykwer twist now and then, a camera with unusual fluidity, or a scene that gets replayed and rethought. Of course, the hugely complicated shootout in the Guggenheim is a masterpiece of excessive and brilliant kinetic filming. For an amazing short video on the building of the sets for this shoot (yes, it wasn't at the real Gug), go to www.firstshowing.net and type guggenheim tykwer.

In all? The best of it is worth the worst of it. A tightly made and not overly preposterous dip into a well stocked pond.

"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.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

As others have stated, the current banking scandals have cast a very grim light on bankers and the banking industry in general, and so The International is, if nothing else, a very timely and relevant thriller that plays on modern fears and frustrations. How it didn't do better at the box office with this in mind (maybe it was the recession? Hah, how ironic would that be, a film failed by the corrupt industry it's trying to expose?) is a mystery, but that it manages to be a genuinely intelligent and absorbing thriller anyway is a credit to it.

We have here a polished effort, slick, stylish and glossy and carried out with an accomplished flair that sets it a cut above some. In the lead role as the intrepid Interpol agent on a deadly trail of murder and corruption, Clive Owen continues to improve as an actor and has fine support, including the likes of Naomi Watts and Armin Mueheller Stall, carrying the story along as it gathers pace. The big down point, though, is that at the expense of this intelligence in the script comes a decidedly dull feeling to the film in parts, with maybe too much talking and too little action, which is counter productive to the riveting attention it's trying to demand. But this does improve towards the end and while there are some flaws, there are certainly more plusses. ***

The Interpol Agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) and his partner are investigating the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC) in a joint operation with the District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) from Manhattan in a two hundred million dollars illegal business of weapons trading. They schedule a meeting with an insider informer from IBBC at the Central Station in Berlin; however his partner is mysteriously killed after the encounter. Salinger finds the identity of the informer when he sees that the Vice President of Acquisitions André Clement (Georges Bigot) had died in a car accident. Salinger and Whitman head to Milan where they meet the politician Umberto Calvini (Luca Giorgio Barbareschi), who is great manufacturer of arms, and he explains that IBBC is interested in buying the missile guiding system that he produces in his factory. When Calvini is murdered by a sniper in a political rally, Salinger and Whitman head to New York following the killer and later to Istanbul, and disclose a scheme of arms supply and destabilization of governments to make their nations slaves of debt. Further, the bank is protected by legal systems and only if Salinger crosses the line he might bring some justice to the corrupt system.

"The International" is a surprisingly effective blockbuster thriller. I had lower expectations with this movie, but I really liked it. The complex story of corruption and greedy has flaws, but holds the attention of the viewer until the last scene. The way Louis Salinger easily travels to many countries is strange, since we simple mortals need documentation, money, reservations, connections in the airports, but his character has no problem even when he is chased by the police. In Guggenheim, the always effective police force of the movies takes a long time to come to the place and arrives only after the shooting. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Trama International" ("International Plot")

A life in film is a wonderful thing, in part because of the people you come to know intimately.

You learn how certain filmmakers twist ideas. How their imagination is shaped. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it stays beautiful and by not changing loses its luster. Then you have guys like Tykwer. He develops. He tries new moves. He thinks deeply about film. He's the guy who reimagined "Rashomon." He's the fellow who stood with Cate Blanchett looking as Kieslowski with a Kieslowski script by God!

He made a film based on sight as smell, and recently one on cinematic sight through blindness.

Now he makes an action movie with, guess what? No sex, no car chase, no fight on the top of a train, no gasoline explosions. And he doesn't rely on that newspaper notion of "a thinking man's thriller," because he deliberately makes the template so ordinary it fades from view. It hardly matters that there is a bank involved. Its all about that vanilla bugaboo, the conspiracy that compromises the authorities and (usually) involves arms. Really, the story disappears.

What we are left with is an amazing use of context. I've seen James Bond, Jason Bourne and Laura Croft traipse through famous cities, but their beings are never affected. Tykwer, I surmise, saw this as an opportunity to do a Kieslowski with cities instead of rooms. Look at what he does, its an entirely environmental film. Its not quite enough, but if you are there already, its sublime.

What else? Well, test audiences did not get it, so there was a scene replaced, the one in the Guggenheim. If you have ever been in that building it is remarkable. Its a failure, an intrusive imposition. You can see where Frank knew that corners were bad, but he so mismanages the eye that you retreat into the art, or try too. Its an amazing, disturbing experience. Tykwer exploits the very things about this space that make it so unnerving.

He pretty much gleefully trashes it. This one scene, added after the movie was finished, makes the whole adventure worthwhile.

If you know architectural cinema, you'll know it was invented by Welles and depends on planes and corners. These are absent here. We have a new method, a new eye.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

In recent times, the major news in the world has consisted of war and banking scandals. While "The International" is mostly an action flick, it does focus on these topics. Like "Syriana" and "Michael Clayton", the movie portrays a world of vile people, although this one has characters whom it's easier to define as protagonists.

The movie's plot is that two agents (Clive Owen and Naomi Watts) investigate a major bank's role in arms trading. In a quest that takes them to places as far apart as New York and Luxembourg* and even Turkey, these two do everything to look into the bizarre conspiracy...not without interference. But the overall point is that pretty much everyone in these sorts of affairs is, for lack of a better word, bad. And it's a true representation of what we've seen in the world during the past few years.

All in all, this movie was no worse than I expected, no better than I expected. Worth seeing maybe once. Directed by Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run") and also starring Armin Mueller-Stahl.

*We don't often see Luxembourg in movies. Or hear about it at all.

No spoilers.

I pretty much had zero expectations for this film. I'd seen an ad or two and it looked conventional at best, clumsy at worst. The previews certainly don't do it justice. It starts smart and mean and doesn't let up. Not everyone will enjoy the unrelenting mood, but I found the picture intense and the rest of the audience in the theater seemed to agree. It helps that Clive Owen is believable as the protagonist and is highly watchable. A lesser actor in the role would have made the film much less effective. Armin Mueller-Stahl also adds credibility and depth. Other supporting actors were, for the most part, strong and gritty. There was probably pressure for a female lead, so in Noami Watts's defense, this is probably part of the reason why the character feels so irrelevant.

I'm happy anytime that a slick international thriller has some brains and isn't completely predictable, so I found the picture highly entertaining, if imperfect. It it flawed? Most certainly. But if you walk into the theater without pretensions, you'll probably be as entertained as I was. And I do think a theater visit is warranted, for the photography mentioned by previous reviewers, if not for the Guggenheim scene alone. I think it's dangerous to trump up a scene too much, because it inevitably leads to disappointment. But having no idea about what was coming... suffice to say, I didn't find the directing anything other than thrilling.

The International involves an investigation into a powerful bank that is doing many terrible things and will destroy anyone who gets in its way. I didn't find this totally convincing. Corporations do many terrible things, but normally they don't instigate violence on a mass scale in first world countries, and this made the movie feel about as realistic as cop films in which mobsters blithely kill off large number of cops and politicians.

But if you overlook that, this is a pretty good movie. The first half is essentially an investigative drama. Once again, there's a little bit of cliché involved in the way you've got a couple of smart investigators determined to find the truth while being hamstrung by their bosses. But it is interesting to watch the investigation proceed.

The second half of the movie is livelier, most notably in a big shootout at the Guggenheim Museum that is pretty entertaining.

But while this was well done, I didn't connect strongly with the movie. The leads were professional but a bit bland, the story, as I've said, seemed a little unrealistic, and the look was often a bit too monochromatic for me as so much of it took place in offices.

I was torn between giving this a 6 or a 7. I feel it is a 7 in quality, but I think in terms of enjoyment I'm closer to 6.

No complaints at all about this gripping movie. The plot is original compared to the usual cops versus bad guys trash that often gets pumped out. The story centers around an international bank that makes its profits by supplying weapons to combatants in the various conflicts that cover the planet. Clive Owen is an Interpol guy trying to bring the bank down. The script is excellent, the acting is very good and the photography is above par for this kind of film. Excellent direction. This movie doesn't try too hard, is free of the clichés that often serve instead of fresh ideas and has a great shoot-out where the surprises and action keep you on the edge of your seat without trying to overwhelm with gore and jerky camera work.

Go see it, you'll enjoy it.

I am a big fan of Tykwer, he could be the new Scorcese and so far I have not seen a bad flick starring Clive Owen. And yet, this movie is a complete let-down: a pathetic story about an obscure bank dealing in the arm trade ( what is the surprise here or the story for a plot?), a useless female lead ( Watts' part could have been played by a large number of actresses) and a waste of Stahl's talent. This movie is so deeply flawed, that the plot holes are the size of the Guggenheim museum. The final shootout in the before mentioned building is laughable and could have been directed much better with a director like Stallone at the helm. For a guy to direct movies like Run Lola Run and Winterland, The International is a complete waste of talent and money. And again: there is no plot.

The International sort of came through cinemas without a great deal of fuss, partly thanks to reviews that, while not bad, where more of a shrug than actual criticism. This sort of lukewarm reception contributed towards it being forgotten quite quickly and is also the reason it has lingered on my rental list for a while before eventually I decided to have a look. I'm reasonably glad I did because mostly the film is a perfectly decent thriller that can best be described as "solid" in that it delivers enough to be watchable without ever doing anything specifically well enough to be memorable or worth seeking out.

The plot must have been part of getting it made because certainly the time is right to find an audience for a thriller where the villain is a bank seeking profit at all moral costs and without any thought about the suffering caused by their pursuit of wealth and power. Perhaps once there was a really smart script with this at its heart but it feels like it was changed along the way to rather lose this element. The bank is really a criminal enterprise and the fact the main characters are bankers is perhaps a secondary thing. This hit me towards the end where the banker aspect was rather jumbled and the film seemed to just end with some sort of conclusion but not one that really justified the whole narrative to that point. The good things are that the script appears to have been changed to be more a traditional thriller so that, while it is about a bank, we still have running, gun fights, car chases and other moments of danger. These are all perfectly fine and the give the film its energy but it does feel like they also robbed the central narrative of a bit of its edge and direction.

The direction is solid though and the cast work well in the main. Owen has presence and commands during most of the film. When the material is not clear then he cannot always salvage it but he does a decent job. Watts is an interesting presence but yet has so little to do – in particular the action parts of the film see her totally sidelined and, where she starts the film as co-star, the second half didn't do much with her. Mueller-Stahl is always a solid performer and is so here, while the supporting cast are all decent enough in support. The script lacking that edge, relevance and direction perhaps affects everyone's performance though.

Overall The International is a solid enough thriller but nothing special or worth making an effort to see. It has some good set pieces and the idea is sound but as it goes on it does seem to lose its way and settles on a conclusion for the sake of a conclusion rather than something strong and effective. Solid, but nothing more than that.

Interpol Agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is investigating the bank IBBC for buying $200million worth of missile guidance system with the Manhattan Assistant D.A. Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts). His partner dies in an apparent sophisticated killing. Then his partner's informer is found dead. Salinger is facing many roadblocks in this international conspiracy of money laundering, arms trafficking, and political corruption. Bank chairman Jonas Skarssen (Ulrich Thomsen)'s police statement is revised. Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is the banker who hired the Consultant.

It's a lot of tense atmospherics. However the heat is left mostly at a slow boil. The use of bankers as bad guys is an interesting twist and a fitting one for the times. This is essentially a spy thriller with bankers instead of spies. The other noticeable thing from director Tom Tykwer is that he loves to put architecture in this movie. The story is a long winding twisty thing. There is a big shootout at the Guggenheim which finally gave this movie some action energy plus the prerequisite architecture fetish. Mostly it's a fun ride for conspiracy lovers.

Tom Tykwer is one of my favorite filmmakers... I know I am in a small camp of people who declare this. Having said that, The International, an exposition heavy conspiracy thriller, is Tykwer's weakest film since 1997's Wintersleepers; it is his least personal and ethereal undertaking yet, not the sum of it's parts, but even so it is still an arguably better film than most wide releases on the American Market right now.

Starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as well... workaholics who happen to be a Interpol agent and DA who want to take down a naughty, naughty bank, Tykwer has assembled his usual crew and post collaborators; cinematographer Frank Griebe, production designer Uli Hanisch and editor Hanne Bannefoy. This is a team that has worked together for years and they all have moments to shine under TT's competent direction. Location work is superb, the film globe trots from Berlin to Milan, NYC to Istanbul. Griebe knows how to shoot bustling cityscapes, seaside vistas and temples, with an almost heavenly eye, while Bonnefoy helps string the image along with an undercurrent of paranoia, leading to a few wonderfully tense moments that do hearken back to the thrillers of the 70s. Hanisch manages to make a full scale replica of the Guggenheim for the film's only action set piece. The set is a marvel to behold as is the action, a true sign that if Tykwer were given a better script he could hold his own with contemporaries such as the Scott brothers and Paul Greengrass. He's also got a lick on the run and gun Hong Kong beat of the 80s.

And so, Eric Warrner Singer's script (surprise, surprise) is where the film flounders. There is that old film school saying - "You can't make a great film out of a mediocre script" - that is all too true here, with the themes and concerns of the piece being explained away in such generic expository metaphors as "we're slaves to debt" or "to get justice you have to go outside the system." While Singer certainly seems to get the procedures of international investigation right - at least in principle - he has left himself no time nor room to sculpt breathable dialog and characters you care about or at least find interesting. Outside of a few scenes, Singer can't figure out compelling plotting or pacing, leaving Tykwer and Bonnefoy to shape and tighten as much as they can as the script just begins to untangle from lack of focus and cheap, lazy story choices.

Owen and Watts are good enough actors, as is their director, to carry their wafer thin agent and attorney through to the end, while Armen Mueller-Stahl also delivers his "old world communist soldier under bank control" with some low level melancholic gravitas, but none of it helps push a film that is trying to explore the twisted minutia of global business, illegal dealings and bureaucratic red tape out of a sodding, soulless place. Then again maybe making a film about such tricky gray areas with a clear message other than "you lose" is damn near impossible.

Tykwer has wanted to do a conspiracy thriller along the lines of "The Parallax View" and "Marathon Man" for years, and while "The International" is relevant today with bank collapses, debts and third world conflicts rising, it is ironic how the man who made "Run Lola Run", clearly an inspiration for Doug Liman's first Bourne film, which launched us into the current globe trotting thriller phase, has ended up making a sub par wannabe.

The International provides a breath of fresh air to fans of thrillers. It is a thriller film that rarely comes out of a big studio these days. It is a film more in style of Hitchcock with the mystery being the film's guiding force rather than frenetically stitched together action scenes. The Bourne Trilogy touched base on this type of thing, but still resorted to a largely conventional plot. While being an enjoyable and smarter-than-usual series of action movies they were nowhere near as intricate than their source material, which really dove into some seriously dark territory plot-wise with things that big budget thriller films almost never dare to touch.

This film does just that type of thing. It presents, as the villain, an institution that is pervasive in the world and most peoples lives. We deal with it almost everyday and we need to as it holds one of the things that we need everyday - money. From an observer viewpoint on this type of relationship it is easy to see which side has great power over the other and like all power, this one can also be abused. Perhaps this plot can turn people off since they refuse to believe that something that they trust with literally everything they've got, could be so untrustworthy. Or perhaps they've never seen or heard about such a thing before so therefore it can't be true. Either way, it is self-imposed mental limitation which will doom someone to eventually liking only one type of movie and/or story. Movies and stories, at their core, are presenting new ideas and patterns and The International doesn't do that with spectacular action scenes, but with it's fresh plot.

Crooks usually rob banks, but who gets robbed if the bank is the crook? That is the film's central question and the answer provided is also a bit more complex than could be expected. The path the answer doesn't always move at a breakneck pace nor are many of the answers provided fully satisfactory.

In addition to the winding plot the film features a spectacular shootout that results in a world class art museum getting trashed. It's a bit of the old action movie formula that almost never gets old, but overall the movie is an Anti-Formula to the every Hollywood Action Movie Formula. --- 9/10

BsCDb Classification: 13+ --- violence

Me and a friend sat down to watch this movie last night, I hardly know where to start... I kept looking on my watch to see how far we were in, and how long it would drag on. Clive Owen made it so terribly monotone, the end of the movie couldn't come fast enough for me. It offered nothing new, nothing surprising, there was not one moment where I thought 'Wow! that's original'! There was no bonding with the characters at all, nor were they likable enough to Not need a background story. We kept on guessing the movie would show what 'it got' in the next 5 minutes, and we kept repeating that to ourselves every 5 minutes, but when the movie ended it still had not happened. To me it was a big let down. I was tricked into seeing it after seeing the positive rating on IMDb, and the positive comments, so I guess enough people like this kinda movies. Just if you're more into a fast paced stories, I suggest you skip this movie.

I'm a fan of German director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, The Princess And The Warrior, Heaven, Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer). The story seemed like a different direction for him, so this was a must see for me.

First, the only problem I had with the film is the screenplay, some contrived lines, especially in the third act, stick out. The dialogue really tries to force the theme down the viewers throat. Other than that, everything else was top notch. The way the story is set up and fleshed out was engrossing to me. I like a film that lets the viewer figure it out for themselves. It's got a classic mystery set up, where the viewer is in the shoes of the protagonist, we get to figure it out along with him as he unravels it.

Clive Owen and Naomi Watts were decent, but not really stretching there acting legs here. The cinematography and locations were beautiful, filmed in a neo-noirish blue/grey color palette with lots of wide angle shots of the characters dwarfed by the urban architecture. The shootout was very well done and more realistic and grittier than the usual action set piece.

It actually reminded me of a Michael Mann film.

"The International" is yet another example of the typical, all-nonsense action thrillers that seems to fill up our theaters these days. Although this one did not perform so well because of it being released during the dawn of the recession, it is very much like the others. It's well-made on a technical standpoint and its action sequences are utterly commendable and electrifying. However, the story is not. Nevertheless, this is one of the few brainless, no-logic thrillers of the 21st century that I have enjoyed mostly because of some terrific performances and some really stunning shootouts.

The plot is ridiculous, but suitable. Clive Owen plays quite well an Interpol agent who stumbles onto a trail leading to an international bank that is involved in the dealing of arms and explosives throughout the world and by himself tries to take the whole operation down, aided by a government official played by Naomi Watts. This is a harebrained and very problematic premise and the story does become a little jumbled and perhaps a bit confusing at times. This is not a picture where you can get up to get a snack, because you'll probably miss something. And you most certainly can't pick it up in the middle or you'll be lost.

Unfortunately, that's a fault. It's one of the reasons why "The International" is only good and not great like the Jason Bourne movies. The movie just keeps throwing one outlandish idea after another and not only does it become disorientating, but actually, toward the end, a little boring.

However, the film is saved by its performances and by its action sequences. Reportedly, the movie was due for an earlier release date, but was delayed so that more scenes could be filmed to transform it into more of an action movie and I am so thankful they did. Because the shootouts and chases are the best thing in the picture as the story and plot are harebrained and dull. So in the end, I am giving the movie a marginal recommendation. It is a decent enough spy-thriller, but not one I could watch every week.