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The International

Movie Grade: D

DVD Features Grade: D-

Overall Grade: D-

The action-thriller genre must have something against movie goers because there is no other excuse for this. It is hard to take this movie seriously, even down to the trailer. For anyone who hasn't had the pleasure of seeing it, it begins with a person using an ATM and the options on it are "Corruption, Extortion, and Murder." Switching to that bank might not be a bad idea because all I get to do is withdraw or deposit. Thankfully this does not make it into the actual film; which begs the question as to who thought it would be a good idea to have in the trailer? Yes this is in fact a movie about a corrupt bank that is corrupt and commits extortion along with the occasional murder. Now, does anybody want to guess what the underlying message is?

Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is an Interpol agent who early on watches a friend of his mysteriously die across the street from him. He rushes through traffic to assist him and would have successfully if he wasn't stuck by the side mirror of a truck in a situation that can only be described as a FAIL! After his accident, Louis is determined that the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC) was behind all of it. Along with Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), Louis attempts to bring the IBBC to justice with as well as use all of the bullets he had been saving.

An allegory about anything to do with the economy would seem like a good idea right now, but The International proves that timing isn't everything. It almost seems like it would be too easy to make a movie on this subject popular, so they had to have tried to make this as unentertaining as it is. Surprisingly this movie is very dialog heavy, a quality it doesn't share with most thrillers. This could have worked in its advantage but the script seems like it was written by a disgruntled accountant because of how easy it was to get lost in the acronyms and political jargon flying around in there. On the flip-side to this the action scenes are completely overdone. With the amount of gunfire going on and the civilians present, it is just ludicrous that more people weren't injured. Any shoot out scenes dragged on to their fullest abilities.

Features on this DVD were equally aggravating to the film so there won't be any sort of redemption in this review. There is only one extended scene according to the menu, but that is a lie and yet another let down. The "scene" runs about eleven minutes and I

would personally considered it to be multiple scenes, but that seems like a petty complaint compared to the rest of them. The Making of The International was going in the right direction when it started. It addressed the BBCI, the bank that inspired the movie. This topic is dropped pretty quickly to usurer in some uninteresting facts about the film itself. My interest was lost before the title even came up.

I urge you to not allow the feature Shooting at the Guggenheim to trick you into thinking it is something worth watching. A mistake I made for myself left me sad when I realized that the feature was destined to fall on its face because it is about shooting the worst scene in the entire movie. There is going to be a short break from the bashing of this DVD to talk about The Architecture of the International. It was refreshing to see something enjoyable come out of this otherwise horrendous DVD. This feature discusses the use of architecture in the film as a means to establish mood which is one positive trait that I have to acknowledge. The Autostadt brings me right back to negative criticism because it is a very weak feature. It would have been stronger if it were a part of The Architecture because it is about the location they chose to be the headquarters of the IBBC.

Movies like this make me reminiscent of ones that I have scolded in the past. Taken comes quickly to mind as far as thrillers are considered. What you have here is a low level thriller, high level being something like The Silence of the Lambs, mid level being Taken, and below the bottom of the barrel being Bangkok Dangerous. Older viewers may enjoy the similarities to 70's thrillers but will most likely be turned off by the rest of the film.

Movie Grade: D

DVD Features Grade: D-

Overall Grade: D-