The International

Everyone loves a movie about the outsider hero taking down the corporate bad guys. Screenwriter Eric Warren Singer’s script which was inspired by the real-life story of the disreputable Bank of Credit and Commercial International which collapsed in 1991 after its nefarious activities were exposed, sets us up well for an exciting ride. The trouble is that after a promising start the landscape becomes so familiar that one can’t help but feel that one’s been here before, and more than once. All the generic elements are here - the indefatigable, globe-trotting, maverick protagonist, the money and power fixated suits in their corporate citadels of glass and steel, the convoys of black limousines, the impassive contract killer and gun-toting henchmen (who mysteriously all turn up for a big action sequence that virtually destroys the Guggenheim) – aside from Owen’s crumpled, not-so-successful crime-busting persona one might be watching yet another instalment from the Bourne or Bond franchises.

As far it goes The International is well crafted, Tykwer delivering the story stylishly and Owen and Watts giving solid performances although the latter has very limited material to work with. Where the film really falls down is the script which initially sets up a challengingly complex web of intrigue but which fails to maintain that level of complexity even relying on clunky expository dialogue to carry the story forward. Probably the aforementioned Guggenheim shoot-out marks the point at which the film loses its intellectual hold, crunching through the convolutions and dramatic potential of the plot with uninspired efficiency. Watt’s character is simply removed, Armin Mueller-Stahl’s familiar old school Iron Curtain left-over is introduced and then similarly dispensed with, uber-bad guy Jonas Skarssen (Ulrich Thomsen) is dispatched with a bullet, even Owen’s morally conflicted, Salinger effectively evaporates. There is simply no catharsis in any of this. The end credits appear over newspaper clippings offering a kind of narrative coda that tells us that Watts' character is continuing the work that Salinger set out to do. It would help however if he had done something. For oddly enough he seems to go the length of the film having achieved nothing or at least very little. This may be the point of the film, with Salinger a kind of distaff hero but if so he should not have been so buried under the stock action thriller elements.

Tykwer made his name with the 1998 art-house hit, Run Lola Run, a marvellously economical rendition of a “ticking-clock” premise. It was good enough to keep audiences coming to his subsequent films although none of them have been as artistically or commercially successful. The International has elements that work and demonstrates a visual flair but seems ultimately to lose itself amongst a raft of superficially similar action thriller films

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