The International
It’s curious to me how a director as singular as Tom Tykwer, who not only directed the innovative “Run Lola Run” ten years ago but also made his last project an adaptation of the long-thought-unfilmmable “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,” goes from those projects to a political thriller as more-or-less straightforward as this one. No matter- this isn’t some one-trick pony thriller like last year’s “Rashomon” rehash “Vantage Point,” but a full-blooded thriller in the “Bourne” tradition that presents an intriguing moral question to its’ protagonist- when it seems the corrupt cannot be brought in with traditional means, will you give in to the alternative? OK, I never said it was an original question- “The Dark Knight” arguably asked that question more provocatively last year- but it does set the story by Eric Singer (in his first screenwriting outing) in motion and leaves the audience intrigued ’til the final frames.
Clive Owen is a force of nature trapped by legal limitations as Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent who’s been trying to bring legal action against the International Bank of Business and Credit for many years now. The IBBC is a hub for terrorist organizations and unstable governments to lauder money for weapons, intelligence, even political killings. The problem is, so aware of any dealings is the IBBC that when a whistleblower tries to move against the Bank, they end of dead or disappeared. Salinger has just had one such person die on him after trying to obtain information on an arms deal the IBBC- and managerial leaders Jonas Skarssen (Ulrich Thomsen) and Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl)- is looking to close with Italian missile manufacturer Umberto Calvini (Luca Barbareschi). Unfortunately, someone gets to the insider before he can talk to Salinger. It’s this murder that sets the story in motion, with Salinger and American agent Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) being led down the looking glass in an attempt to get to the bottom of what the IBBC is going to do next.
Pretty basic stuff, even with Singer’s excessively-wordy screenplay clocking in at an over-long two hours (yes, in this case, two hours is a touch too long) and opting for dialogue-driven thriller scenes than excessive action scenes, although Tykwer’s staging of a gun fight in New York’s Guggenheim museum is a piece de resistance sequence of special effects and dizzying thrills. No matter- the scenes that’ll pin audiences to their seats in “The International” are dialogue-driven affairs, whether it’s a conversation Salinger and Whitman have with Calvini that sums up the IBBC’s intentions with complexity and clarity; Salinger and Whitman doing investigative work at the scene of an assassination by the back; or Salinger interrogating Wexler after the Guggenheim incident in a dialogue that gets to the harsh truths about the limits of justice in the legal system, leading to a roof-top confrontation in Turkey where vigilante justice is the only way to get around thorny politics.
Even with action maverick John Woo serving as executive producer, one can sense the stench of sell-out by Tykwer- who also co-composed the gripping score with Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek- who, after the epic under-performing of his provocative big-budget adaptation “Perfume,” clearly needed to go Hollywood to get financing for more personal projects. A film like “The International” gets at the heart of Hollywood’s own corrupt soul, distilled best in the opening segment of Martin Scorsese’s great documentary “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies,” titled “The Director’s Dilemma,” which basically says, the only way you can work in Hollywood is to do “one for them, and one for yourself.” Oh well, Tykwer doesn’t sell-out completely- his technical eye is still aces above Hollywood hacks, and his directorial hand gets intriguing work from all the actors involved- but “The International” is the type of film you can’t stand seeing from Hollywood- a movie about going outside the vision of traditional justice to solve a crime that goes, more or less, by the numbers of films of Hollywood past. A shame really.
