Movie Review "The International" : the suspense, the concept & the scare...

“The International” is a movie that brings into visuals what we have heard/theorized/surmised and yeah feared. The great part is the ending is a concoction of realism and cinematic realism. It’s an “only in a movie” emotion with a “that makes sense” emotion. There are solid performances from Clive Owen (Louis Salinger, an Interpol detective) and Brian O’Byrne (the hired contract killer). The others have chipped in well at various points of the movie.

The movie starts with a cold killing of Louis’ Interpol partner after a meeting with an insider. This insider happens to be a key cog of a mega bank IBBC. The IBBC is the focus of the Interpol investigation, with suspicions centering on the true intentions, ideals and asset managements of the bank. The Interpol with its nosy detective Louis Salinger tries to pry open the veil of the bank, that seems to be no different than the corner Credit Union bank down the street.

As the movie rolls on, events unfold that seemed to cast the IBBC bank in less than flattering company, in terms of their association and their involvement and intentions in events that are momentous and mostly dangerous. Louis and his superior Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) seem to be on an impossible pursuit. Armed with truck loads of money, assets that stretch across the continents, contacts that range from the local lieutenant to the Italian presidential hopeful, the banks tentacles seem to ensnarl almost anyone that it comes across. The director tries well to depict the bank as a well run mafia organization only globally more influential and well funded.

The movie has its share of stereotypical events, incidents that make the hunter become the hunted, as agent Salinger comes to the realization he might be fighting a hopeless cause. Agent Salinger tries his best to follow the trail and pickup any bits of information that he can get his hand on, but as pressure to curtail his investigation increases Salinger does some unconventional things to get more evidence. I think the highlight of the movie is the contract killer of the IBBC doing his psychotic acts and being very suave in getting away from them, only to finally become the hunted by the IBBC. The scene that ensues with Salinger trying to protect the contract killer he came to arrest from the IBBC is well executed.

Though Salinger loses his fight to get anything out of the contract killer, with the help of his buddies in the NYPD, he tracks down the killer’s contact and he is lead on the trail of IBBC’s chairman Jonas Skarssen. How Salinger confronts Skarssen and what ensues is the rest of the movie. What I liked about the movie is that they have played on the fears of the common man, “Can we really trust anyone?”. While there are holes in some of the theories in the movie, the whole product as such is palatable. Ever since Matrix resonated with the audience with its array of fear instigating concepts and its overall idea of the helplessness of our existence, movies of such ilk have tried to recreate fear to the best they can.

The International, has a good theory, but I am afraid it doesn’t do enough to scare you, it doesn’t do enough to make you think “you know what… that’s out of the box”. Too often you come across good concepts not treated well, while I wont call this movie as a bad effort, I do think that it’s a bad end product. The climax highlights the helplessness, even for agent Salinger, where he only ends up with the satisfaction of shooting down the messenger of IBBC and not the IBBC itself. I liked that ending, only I have a problem with how this could have been handled better. The audience could have been scared a little bit better, a solid effort but an average end result for “The International”. I would give a D+ and recommend waiting for the movie to be on the “tele” or “blockbuster”.