Movie Review: The international

The International, the new thriller from director Tom Tykwer, could be dismissed as an easy reaction to our current economic crisis. Clive Owen plays Interpol Agent Louis Salinger who has spent years trying to stop IBBC operations, an international bank that’s been a major money-laundering facility for organized crime and which is now branching out into arms trading.

Working with Salinger on the case is Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. The tricky part about nailing IBBC is that whenever someone might actually come forward with damning evidence, that person end up dead or permanently missing. (Salinger left Scotland Yard years earlier after he couldn’t save the lives of his star witness and his family.)

The International is a movie that looked very promising but in the end fell flat. With all of that being said, personally, I enjoyed the movie. I thought Naomi Watts and Clive Owens were stellar in their roles and the suspenseful of the plot was enough to keep me guessing as to how it would end. From New York to Europe, the locals were just as much characters in the movie and each location its own flavor to the story. This might not be the fastest thriller out there but it is one of the smartest ones I’ve seen in a long time.