150 Word Reviews: 'The International' (2009)
Clive dangerously
Few actors convey grizzled, righteous sincerity with the same sincere intensity as Clive Owen, whose gritty powers peaked in 2006’s Children of Men. But he still had plenty of juice left over for director Tom Tykwer’s The International, a cerebral, le Carré-esque corporate thriller full of tense conversations in offices and plenty of paperwork.
Naomi Watts co-stars as a Manhattan DA investigating a crooked international bank. She’s helped by Owen’s character, an Interpol detective, who gets too close to a vast criminal conspiracy. The baddies are a rogues’ gallery of dirty Eurotrash bankers and their toadies, including Armin Mueller-Stahl and Ulrich Thomsen. There’s a lot of breathless exposition, but halfway through the movie, suddenly, there’s an incredible shootout inside the Guggenheim Museum that’s everything you could ever want in an action setpiece. An earlier assassination scene in a crowd that is also superb, The Day of the Jackal-level political mayhem.
From The Archive: ‘The Day Of The Jackal’ (1973)
