Tom Tykwer is one of my favorite filmmakers... I know I am in a small camp of people who declare this. Having said that, The International, an exposition heavy conspiracy thriller, is Tykwer's weakest film since 1997's Wintersleepers; it is his least personal and ethereal undertaking yet, not the sum of it's parts, but even so it is still an arguably better film than most wide releases on the American Market right now.
Starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as well... workaholics who happen to be a Interpol agent and DA who want to take down a naughty, naughty bank, Tykwer has assembled his usual crew and post collaborators; cinematographer Frank Griebe, production designer Uli Hanisch and editor Hanne Bannefoy. This is a team that has worked together for years and they all have moments to shine under TT's competent direction. Location work is superb, the film globe trots from Berlin to Milan, NYC to Istanbul. Griebe knows how to shoot bustling cityscapes, seaside vistas and temples, with an almost heavenly eye, while Bonnefoy helps string the image along with an undercurrent of paranoia, leading to a few wonderfully tense moments that do hearken back to the thrillers of the 70s. Hanisch manages to make a full scale replica of the Guggenheim for the film's only action set piece. The set is a marvel to behold as is the action, a true sign that if Tykwer were given a better script he could hold his own with contemporaries such as the Scott brothers and Paul Greengrass. He's also got a lick on the run and gun Hong Kong beat of the 80s.
And so, Eric Warrner Singer's script (surprise, surprise) is where the film flounders. There is that old film school saying - "You can't make a great film out of a mediocre script" - that is all too true here, with the themes and concerns of the piece being explained away in such generic expository metaphors as "we're slaves to debt" or "to get justice you have to go outside the system." While Singer certainly seems to get the procedures of international investigation right - at least in principle - he has left himself no time nor room to sculpt breathable dialog and characters you care about or at least find interesting. Outside of a few scenes, Singer can't figure out compelling plotting or pacing, leaving Tykwer and Bonnefoy to shape and tighten as much as they can as the script just begins to untangle from lack of focus and cheap, lazy story choices.
Owen and Watts are good enough actors, as is their director, to carry their wafer thin agent and attorney through to the end, while Armen Mueller-Stahl also delivers his "old world communist soldier under bank control" with some low level melancholic gravitas, but none of it helps push a film that is trying to explore the twisted minutia of global business, illegal dealings and bureaucratic red tape out of a sodding, soulless place. Then again maybe making a film about such tricky gray areas with a clear message other than "you lose" is damn near impossible.
Tykwer has wanted to do a conspiracy thriller along the lines of "The Parallax View" and "Marathon Man" for years, and while "The International" is relevant today with bank collapses, debts and third world conflicts rising, it is ironic how the man who made "Run Lola Run", clearly an inspiration for Doug Liman's first Bourne film, which launched us into the current globe trotting thriller phase, has ended up making a sub par wannabe.
Starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as well... workaholics who happen to be a Interpol agent and DA who want to take down a naughty, naughty bank, Tykwer has assembled his usual crew and post collaborators; cinematographer Frank Griebe, production designer Uli Hanisch and editor Hanne Bannefoy. This is a team that has worked together for years and they all have moments to shine under TT's competent direction. Location work is superb, the film globe trots from Berlin to Milan, NYC to Istanbul. Griebe knows how to shoot bustling cityscapes, seaside vistas and temples, with an almost heavenly eye, while Bonnefoy helps string the image along with an undercurrent of paranoia, leading to a few wonderfully tense moments that do hearken back to the thrillers of the 70s. Hanisch manages to make a full scale replica of the Guggenheim for the film's only action set piece. The set is a marvel to behold as is the action, a true sign that if Tykwer were given a better script he could hold his own with contemporaries such as the Scott brothers and Paul Greengrass. He's also got a lick on the run and gun Hong Kong beat of the 80s.
And so, Eric Warrner Singer's script (surprise, surprise) is where the film flounders. There is that old film school saying - "You can't make a great film out of a mediocre script" - that is all too true here, with the themes and concerns of the piece being explained away in such generic expository metaphors as "we're slaves to debt" or "to get justice you have to go outside the system." While Singer certainly seems to get the procedures of international investigation right - at least in principle - he has left himself no time nor room to sculpt breathable dialog and characters you care about or at least find interesting. Outside of a few scenes, Singer can't figure out compelling plotting or pacing, leaving Tykwer and Bonnefoy to shape and tighten as much as they can as the script just begins to untangle from lack of focus and cheap, lazy story choices.
Owen and Watts are good enough actors, as is their director, to carry their wafer thin agent and attorney through to the end, while Armen Mueller-Stahl also delivers his "old world communist soldier under bank control" with some low level melancholic gravitas, but none of it helps push a film that is trying to explore the twisted minutia of global business, illegal dealings and bureaucratic red tape out of a sodding, soulless place. Then again maybe making a film about such tricky gray areas with a clear message other than "you lose" is damn near impossible.
Tykwer has wanted to do a conspiracy thriller along the lines of "The Parallax View" and "Marathon Man" for years, and while "The International" is relevant today with bank collapses, debts and third world conflicts rising, it is ironic how the man who made "Run Lola Run", clearly an inspiration for Doug Liman's first Bourne film, which launched us into the current globe trotting thriller phase, has ended up making a sub par wannabe.