The International

While it looks like an action-packed romp, except that it's not action, unless you count the shootout in the gallery, which is the only one that really caught my attention. Otherwise? Not that great. I'd give it 2 stars, but because it ends quite realistically and believably, indeed it's all pretty believable in general (their injuries, for example – they really are injured, they go to the doctor and don't miraculously recover from their injuries in the next scene). So I really appreciate that about this film. Then there's also my favorite actor starring – another plus. The romance wasn't there, which may be a shame for the viewer's attention span, but maybe that's what really makes the film more believable... anyway, check it out if you like Clive and if you like the worker ant wanting to bring down the supervillain corporation. (03/05/2010)

A bureaucracy bound James Bond from the financial world. Tykwer approaches this untraditionally, almost unwatchably. I was expecting something like Michael Clayton in a different environment with scores of attractive locations. And I got Michael Clayton in a different atmosphere with scores of attractive locations. The only action scene is absolutely fantastic (not just due to the choice of locations), but it is completely out of place in this movie. A calm, serious tempo where even the nerve-racking chases happen at brisk walking pace and all of a sudden we get an action movie like from John Woo, and with humor to boot! And then a return to the slow, but in no way boring tempo. If the Whitman character weren’t so superfluous and those several rather laughable genre clichés (it applies that they might not have mattered in a different movie, but here they are simply eyesores), then I would have enjoyed Tykwer’s idea of a thriller, and raised no objections. (03/29/2009)

I had simply perceived Tykwer's film as a classic "spy" thriller, which seems to have been made in the 1960s or 1970s, when the genre was particularly favored. I didn't really (consciously, at least) focus on which direction the characters were moving and which cameras were moving, and I "just" watched the well-chosen locations, the suspenseful story development, the sympathetically scruffy Clive Owen, the sympathetically un-scruffy Naomi Watts, and the masterful Mueller-Stahl, and I was blissful that the script wasn't as stupid as most contemporary thrillers.... And that was enough for me, actually. The fact that there is a lot of talking in The International is not a bad thing, and one truly “action" scene (the bombastic shootout in the Guggenheim Museum, which was probably built for this sequence) is also quite enough. (06/28/2012)

The International is a decent, though somewhat chatty, political/espionage flick with one excellent shootout. The characters are not exactly depicted in detail, which makes the audience appreciate the expressive body language of Clive Owen. He’s a perfect fit for his agent character. Naomi Watts is just there for marketing purposes, so that her face could be put on the posters. The story is overly contrived but interesting and the soft, pulsating electronic music helps to keep the suspense going (it’s simply fun to root for a bold, likable guy standing up against the most powerful manipulators in the world). There’s also an atmospheric manor on a cliff, looking like something from a Bond film. It’s no new Bourne and Michael Clayton went deeper, but Tykwer’s commercial flick does reach the level of Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter. (03/03/2009)

Tom Tykwer is definitively becoming a polymath who can inventively shoot any genre, but this time I can't buy it from his hand. He does a guide to the world of frauds with ease, but at the same time, every time the viewer catches up with the screenplay through the various twists and turns, it adds another twist and shows that this time it won't lend a helping hand to those lagging behind. Any positive impressions are mainly gained by Clive Owen, once again in the role of an indefatigable hitchhiker. In his performance, the perfectly escalating shootout became, without exaggeration, a legendary scene. (10/19/2009)