Tom Tykwer, the director of The International previously made Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I happened to stumble across that film while wanting to stop pressing the buttons on my remote and it gave me reason. After a while, I forgot to switch out even during the breaks, not wanting to miss even a few seconds of the post-break return. That film had a magnetic charm, much like a good perfume which has a Proustian essence.
The first scene of The International opens on the glass facade railway station in Hamburg, Germany (I may be wrong about the city). I was engaged when the character on whom the film opens collapses on the sidewalk a moment after a knowing nod at his partner, Clive Owen standing across the street, waiting for it, so the games could begin.
To bring you up to speed, Clive Owen is an Interpol agent, working closely with the US NY District Attorney's office on bringing down an International bank, which they believe is involved in non-banking activities far beyond their memorandum charters. Why is the NY DA's office involved? Because we thus are introduced to the only female presence in the film, and quite a pleasant one at that, Naomi Watts, pleasantly outlining her legal character's need in an otherwise boys playground.
It's incidental that I had watched a documentary called Zeitgeist only a day before I happened to watch The International. The premise of the two are rather similar; that a small group of extremely wealthy and deeper-than-you-can-imagine pockets are running the show of the world, pulling the strings by which we live and breathe and someday, if they wish, they can pull the plug and we will have little respite. Sounds like too far fetched a conspiracy theory? Maybe in another day and age, but today it's plausible.
So the Intl. Bank for Business & Credit has its funds locked in to a multi-billion dollar small arms & missile guidance systems deal (talk about range) wherein they buy from China (apparently they don't just make clothes and electronics cheaper than everyone else, this is part of their wares as well) and sell to the third world, fuelling wars, which in turn keeps the respective governments from ever getting on their feet, which in turn necessitates that they keep borrowing from the bank (in this case) to keep an ineffective-and-hopeless economy above water, and thus in turn profit from it. It's not fantastical, there seems to be irrefutable historical evidence of governments and corporations having done this for decades.
Owen and Watts must bring the bank to its knees, but they cannot because the well is poisoned; no one who drinks from it can survive, no one who can do anything about it will clean it because everyone profits from people drinking from it, and thus anyone who wants to do something about it, must be drowned in it. For that purpose, the bank hires a believeably cold blooded professional hitman, called The Consultant, played by Brian O'Byrne.
A lot of questions or explanations that could have been supplied are withheld by the filmmakers, for reasons they best know. How exactly does a bank broker arms deals between buyers / suppliers; why would they do it themselves, instead of only being the financier behind the veil and avoiding implication; why do they never effectively put the hit on Owen when anyone else, right up to the touted next in line President of Italy, is only one sniper shot away; how do dozens of assasins turn up armed with sub-machine guns in an NY art gallery and go trigger happy for a good 10 minutes without police or any of the two dozen special task forces not showing up, are all questions that one might ask and not find answers to.
Let me try and answer that question. It's NOT IMPORTANT. The film is one deeply immersed and soaked in the style and treatment of the spy/ thriller genre, where predecessors would be cult films like Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, Chinatown, Enemy of the State etc. It's about the thrill of the genre, accentuated by elements of ambience, lighting, mood, moments that deliver satisfaction more than concrete plot or back story rationales. Not to say a plot could have a hole in the wall, but a few shaky bricks needn't bring it down.
Tykwer wasn't going after a slap-and-dash thriller (the shoot-shoot, bada boom, whoosh dhoom types); the mindless, dead as a duck sorts. This was to be an interesting and engaging film. While there are moments when the narrative seems to slip away into auto-pilot mode, most of the time, Tykwer has your attention and even significant interest in the proceedings.
Clive Owen is one of those actors that I enjoy watching. He brings a certain edgyness to his character, infusing scenes with great nervous energy. However, for most part of the film, he looks like he could push himself to death out of exhaustion, making the job easier for the antagonists. Armin Mueller-Stahl plays the bad guy with such charismatic understated affliction that you want to like him. Ulrich Thomsen as the Chairman of the malevolent Bank has such aritocratic carriage that he is anyday more aspirational than the bourgeois Owen.
Tom Tykwer infuses his film with characteristic elements of the genre, invoking inward smiling moments during the viewing experience. A 10 minute long action sequence (and the only one) in the film, staged at the Guggenheim Museum of NY, reconstructed elaborately in an abandoned railroad house in Germany is not just superlatively choreographed and executed, but is intensely exciting.
I enjoyed The International for what it was, not the promise of all that it could have been.
