|
 Is
it a blessing or a curse that no matter how scruffy one of Clive Owen’s
characters appears on the surface, there’s just something innately Bond
about him? The bass in the voice, the canny tilt of the head, the glint
in the eye, the pantherine movements even when he’s trying to look
clumsy. No, the boy can’t help it, he’s just smooth.
So, when you watch Owen in The
International, playing the shaken and disheveled Interpol agent, Louis
Salinger, a man haunted by ghosts of fallen comrades while chasing
unreachable dragons; even at his most angst-ridden and frazzled, there’s
just something utterly heroic about him. For Salinger, the stakes are
life and death with the Grim Reaper arriving Ninja-like with an
innocuous nudge on the back, or in a blazing shootout in one of the
world’s most famous landmarks. Like a tired warrior heading into the
arms of the Valkyrie, Salinger commits himself to seeing the fight
through even if it kills him. Hard to believe all this fuss is about
banking.
That fuss couldn’t come at a
better time. Director Tom Tykwer must be kissed by the angels to have
released The International when the entire world is ready to lynch their
nearest banker. The International gives us a nice, simple plotline with
which to focus that ire. The IBBC is a bad, bad, international banking
conglomerate, laundering money for all sorts of worldwide hooliganism;
funding wars and coups all with the eye of a vulture hoping to gobble
the financial carrion the devastation of these awful acts will incur.
Louis Salinger and his trusty group of international do-gooders,
including Eleanor Whitman {Naomi
Watts}, a Manhattan
District Attorney, have been on the trail of the IBBC’s evil ways to put
an end to it all. The closer the team gets to finding out who’s at the
head of all these highly-illegal shenanigans, the more endangered they
become. The IBBC is like a hydra, cut one head off and nine more grow
its place with sharp, pointy teeth. Salinger has already lost one
partner and watches another expire mere yards away from where he
stands. Salinger refuses to back down and has to learn to be the
predator in this cat and mouse game where he is outnumbered, outfunded
and outgunned.
Tom Tykwer manages to make a
thumping action piece out of all this. I never thought a film about a
financial institution could be so exciting. The International does a
great job of laying out for those who only have a vague notion what
exactly these private banks do and how deeply into our lives and world
politics these faceless parasites are embedded. At its heart, The
International is a David and Goliath story where the teeny- tiny Davids
(Salinger and Whitman)
aim their slingshot at a Goliath so tall they can’t even see its
forehead. For all the posh veneer and postures of above-it-all elegance
that these bankers in their immaculate suits exude, in the end they are
thugs and speculators, playing ends against the middle, ruthlessly
counting on human tragedy to fill their coffers. Like any back-alley
extortionist, they will use unbridled force to keep the gravy train
running. Crossing Germany, Italy, France, Turkey and New York City
either in pursuit of or being pursued by the IBBC’s hired guns, Salinger
reluctantly has to become a one-man Special Forces; chasing down,
fighting, thwarting and fleeing assassins, the Interpol operative is
well over his head and on his last worn-out nerve. His only
on-the-ground assistance comes from the level-headed Whitman, a couple
of plucky NYPD officers, and the IBBC’s resident ninja, who finds out
the hard way that he’s just as expendable to his masters as anyone else.
There’s rarely a moment in The
International to let out a breath. Tykwer invests as much tension into
scenes where Salinger and Whitman are questioning leads as he does in
his action scenes. That said, Salinger’s heart-pounding shootout with a
covey of IBBC hitmen in New York’s Guggenheim Museum is one of the best
cinematic uses of a Manhattan landmark since King Kong. Best yet, my
shaky-cam sensor didn’t go off once. I’d begun to believe directors had
forgotten there really is a Dramamine-free way to put the audience in
the middle of the excitement and I’d like to take a moment to thank Tom
Tykwer - who knows a bit about kinetic action, e.g. his heraldic
showcase, 1998’s Run Lola Run - for holding the bloody camera still. I
was on the edge of my seat for the entire guns blazing white-knuckle
ride down the spiral-shaped museum and knocked out by the beauty of its
terrifying choreography. Tykwer makes great use of architecture and
locations to set up his motifs as the banking fiends hide in plain sight
of state-of-the-art glass towers in Berlin and Milan, ultimately the
real fight brings things down to the gritty level of the backstreets of
New York City and through the underground cisterns and Grand Bazaar of
Istanbul.
Tykwer’s casting of Clive Owen
as the hollow-eyed David against the glass and chrome Goliath is
perfect. He’s given up any semblance of a normal life to the fight
against IBBC, and is a shell of a man. It’s not all that much of a
stretch for him to go Kamikaze and commit all the way. The flip side to
that coin is the refreshingly sane portrait of Naomi Watts’ D.A.
character, who unlike Salinger, has very much to lose. She’s a happy
family woman whose maternal instincts comfort the rudderless Salinger,
yet can take some hard bumps and bruises and is as savvy her male
counterpart bending the rules when necessary. The chemistry between
Whitman and Salinger is tangible and makes sense, but is nicely balanced
within their roles. Armin Mueller-Stahl as a financial advisor who sold
his staunchly anti-capitalist soul to the IBBC, packs a gut punch in the
only “quiet” scene in the film in an ideals-challenging interrogation
between himself and Owen’s Salinger. Finally the world will see the
innate lethal cool of Irish actor Brian F. O’ Byrne as frighteningly
amorphous assassin, able to slay with a pat on the back.
Good stuff, this. Fantastic
action, a brilliant cast and a sharp script tightly directed, The
International's thrills and excitement are only matched and indeed
heightened by its uncannily apropos timing.
~ The Lady Miz Diva
Feb 12th,
2009
Click Here to read our interview with The
International stars Clive Owen, Naomi Watts and Director Tom Tykwer!
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