Movie Summary and Review By Michael The Moviegoer.
THE INTERNATIONAL: “Rates High Interest”
Rating ***1/2
Tom Tykwer is a cool director. Among the cool titles in his filmography are “Run Lola Run” and the criminally underrated and overlooked “Perfume”. With “The International”, Tykwer may have his first big mainstream hit. For those who once prayed that Clive Owen would become the next James Bond, this film will make you pray even harder that Tom Tykwer is approached to direct a future 007 film.
“The International” is a real firecracker of a movie. It’s a hi-tech, globe-trotting, mystery thriller with banks and bankers as the bad guys. The title refers to the name of a bank that’s involved in financing terrorists around the world. Funny, but in reality, the fact that banks have been taking our taxpayer’s bailout money and using it to renovate their CEO’s private office bathrooms seems far worse to me than the events in this movie.
Smart and suspenseful, “The International” is also a throwback to the great thrillers of the 70s like “Three Days Of The Condor” and “The Day Of The Jackal”. It contains a shoot-out scene set in New York’s Guggenheim Art Museum that is among the most exciting and cinematic action sequences I have ever seen. I often try to avoid using the cliche “edge-of-your-seat”, but that’s where I found myself throughout this tense, riveting film.
DVD Watch: Not enough movies of this type exist to qualify ‘banking thrillers’ as a genre, but in 1981 Alan J. Pakula made a great little-known film called “Rollover” starring Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson. Leonard Maltin criticizes the film as being “financial science fiction”. But for me, that description has enormous appeal. The movie supposes what might happen if all Arab money was withdrawn from U.S. banks at the same time, completely destabilizing the world’s money markets. An intelligent thriller, “Rollover” is currently available on DVD.
Michael The Moviegoer
