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benjaminwmartin
Reviews
The International (2009)
Mindlessly entertaining hokum
Clive Owen, who appears to be on a crusade to beef up his action credentials ever since taking the lead role in 2007s ludicrously violent Shoot 'em up, adds espionage skills to his leading-man repertoire in Tom Tykwer's globe-trotting thriller The International.
His face set in a permanent grimace, Owen plays Interpol agent Louis Salinger who is investigating the murky and potentially criminal activities of an investment bank run by Danish chief executive Jonas Skarssen (Ulrich Thomsen).
Accompanied by Naomi Watts, who plays New York's assistant district attorney, Owen travels between Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul to uncover crucial evidence required to convict the nefarious banker for illicit arms-dealing. These urban environments are gorgeously shot by Tykwer, who successfully captures the unique feel and atmosphere of the different cities as well as the sterile coldness of modern corporate buildings. But whilst Tykwer has a good eye for framing the perfect take, he gets little out of his actors and the sub-standard performances jar against the beautifully shot landscapes.
Owen, who appeared so versatile in his early roles, is becoming increasingly one-note and in this film he simply reads his lines with little emotion and commitment: even in the most intense action scenes, he appears barely more than mildly annoyed, let alone frightened. Watts is similarly unimpressive, and fails to add an ounce of character to her role. Admittedly, neither actor is helped by the clunky script, which forces the leads to deliver exposition instead of realistic dialogue and which includes such philosophical gems as "sometimes you find your destiny on the road you took to avoid it".
Where the film really falls down, however, is with the plot, which asks the audience to buy into the premise that bankers are frighteningly efficient criminal masterminds. In a year that has seen banking profits tumble and financial institutions collapse, it is simply too much to believe that a financier could orchestrate a civil war when it has become obvious that modern bankers cannot even balance their own books.
The International, with its fantastical plot, wastes what was an opportunity for a timely examination of the failings of modern finance. In an age when business news is hogging the headlines and people are becoming increasingly financially literate, the film offers only superficial insights into the corporate world, which was much better examined by Tony Gilroy in Michael Clayton.
Taken simply as Saturday night hokum, however, The International is mindlessly enjoyable, and the exhilarating set-piece gunfight staged in New York's Guggenheim Museum easily matches anything in the Bourne trilogy and is worth the ticket price alone.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Over-hyped but solid blockbuster which is well-worth viewing
I was really looking forward to seeing this film and, as a summer blockbuster, it certainly doesn't disappoint. If you are looking for well-executed action (though some of it is confusingly edited) solid acting from a good cast and unnerving tension then this certainly is the film for you. Chris Nolan proves to be skilfully adept at maintaining nerve-wracking tension throughout the second half of this film and I was genuinely not sure which characters would still be alive at the end, something which is no mean feat considering the formulaic nature of most modern blockbusters. The overwhelming feeling of dread which pervades this picture has been skillfully created by a director who has managed to seamlessly integrate an excellent sound-track with dark but beautiful cinematography and unusually committed performances from an ensemble cast, the strongest of which coming from Heath Ledger, who manages to invest the Joker with a surprisingly malevolent presence for a summer film.
Unfortunately, much of this is undone by a script and story which fails to support the hard-work of both the director and cast. Whilst the film purports to explore deep and disturbing issues relating to madness and heroism, the script isn't half as clever as it thinks it is. Yes, the Joker is vividly painted as an unnerving agent of chaos who's objective is to reveal the dark underbelly of human nature, but the scriptwriter is denied the opportunity to fully explore the questions raised by this character because of the wham-bam demands of summer action movies. The audience is instead subjected to a series of gruelling hostage situations which, whilst effectively intense, are too numerous and unrelenting for the director to explore the psychological effects these scenarios have on the rest of the cast, thus depriving the Joker of much of his potency.
Added to this is a ridiculous story which simply fails to adhere to logic or reason. Yes, the Joker is meant to be a criminal mastermind, but even he does not have the power to read the future and many of his schemes are simply impossible to execute. SPOILER The most improbable story development has to be the revelation that the Joker planned all along to be captured by the police mid-film and has already devised a means of escape. The Joker simply has no time to come up with his alternate scheme of taking both Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes hostage any plausible explanations made by fans of the film for many of the plot-twists and turns simply hold no water. SPOILER
For a film that prides itself in translating the Batman mythos into a recognisable reality the implausible story only serves to remind the viewer that, despite all of the skill that has gone into developing The Dark Knight, this is only a summer blockbuster after all and it is certainly not the dark masterpiece that many have claimed it to be.