The International

Timing is everything. It’s a measure of The International’s credibility as a vaguely pompous yet mercilessly entertaining conspiracy thriller about global banking baddies that it can get away, without a single unintentional titter, with the climactic line, uttered by non-ironic hero Louis Salinger (Clive Owen), “There must be a way to bring down this bank!”

Salinger is a former Scotland Yard hotshot turned Interpol agent who comes from the time before banks were easy to bring down, and mostly do it by themselves. Instead, here, in the glamorous globe-trotting frames of The International, as written by Eric Singer and directed by the German master stylist Tom Tykwer, the evil International Bank of Business and Credit runs the world, is about to broker a huge arms deal between China and Iran, and can only be brought down by the persistent meddling of one determined Interpol agent and his attractive American sidekick, Eleanor, played by Naomi Watts.

Yes, it’s wildly idiotic stuff, and includes a post-assassination crime scene that’s far too easy to master (two pencils plus two bullet holes plus two minutes contemplation equals crime solved!). But Tykwer nonetheless displays a pelting sense of pace, and repeatedly employs close-ups on Owen’s ingenuous mug to devastating effect (is there nothing this man can say that doesn’t sound like it’s been ripped from his very soul – “They’ll get to you! If they can’t get to you, they’ll get to your family!!”). Plus, in the greatest inter-ballistic masterstroke since the lobby scene in The Matrix, or the climactic heist in Heat, Tykwer and co. pulverise the entire interior of New York’s Guggenheim Museum, turning a routine surveillance job for Salinger into one epic, and relentlessly cacophonous shootout.

Kevin Maher

Anticipation:

A Clive Owen banking thriller? Oh, go on then!

Enjoyment:

Like a well-oiled thriller machine where bankers are bad guys, this is a guilty, guilty pleasure indeed.

In Retrospect:

Still guilty.