Clive Owen, Naomi Watts Fail to Save Deadly Dull ‘The International’

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Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Tom Tykwer’s “The International,” an alleged thriller starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts, is one of the most surprisingly inert films so far this year, an awfully written conspiracy flick that never gets out of neutral and is only remotely worth someday seeing for one fantastic action sequence.

Playing off the current fears about privacy and the control of worldwide corporations, writer Eric Warren Singer tries to blend modern paranoia with the genre of the action thriller, but ends up writing a film that is somehow both overly complicated and shockingly predictable at the same time.

as Louis Salinger in Columbia Pictures thriller The International.
Photo credit: Jay Maidment/Columbia Pictures

With a plot that’s either impossible to follow or merely so dull that I stopped trying, “The International” drowns a solid set-up, talented cast, and one great action set-piece in a tide of nonsensical drama about one man’s battle against a corrupt banking behemoth.

That man is Louis Salinger (Clive Owen), an Interpol investigator who is on the verge of breaking a worldwide conspiracy wide open. An informant at a world banking power is about to reveal that his company has been buying up missile guidance systems. Of course, within minutes of the opening credits both Louis’ partner and their contact is dead, leaving a frustrated Louis back at square one.

Salinger has been working with the New York Assistant District Attorney (Naomi Watts) and the two refuse to give up their quest to topple a force that seems to be able to execute anyone who gets in their way, even world leaders. Armin Mueller-Stahl plays the coordinator for the powers that be at the bank and Brian F. O’Byrne plays their most efficient assassin.

Singer simply does not know how to write effective dialogue and every line in his script for “The International” is either cliched junk like “finding a way further in when you can’t find one out” or plot-driven nonsense with character names that mean nothing to the audience. For “The International” to work, we need to identify with Salinger and care about his passionate journey. We never do.

Photo credit: Jay Maidment/Columbia Pictures

It’s nearly remarkable to watch an actor as charismatic as Clive Owen fall victim to a script this bad and Naomi Watts, one of my favorite actresses, has never been this completely wasted. Even the great Mueller-Stahl appears to have been directed to play “sleepy” instead of serious.

Nearly all of “The International” is stuck in neutral, except for one fifteen-minute sequence that guns the film from 0 to 60 and almost makes it worth seeing. About two-thirds of the way through, Tykwer and Singer stage a shoot-out at the legendary Guggenheim Museum that action junkies will easily rank among the best of the last few years.

I won’t give it away, but the architecture of the scene - machine guns, Owen, O’Byrne, lots of glass, a few innocent bystanders - is as riveting as any gun-driven scene in a long time. It’s as if Brian De Palma, a director who never met a shoot-out he didn’t adore, took over direction for a week and then handed it back to Tykwer to bring the film back to a screeching halt.

Of course, I could never recommend a movie solely for one great action set-piece, but it is the only thing that saves this cinematic Ambien from being a contender for one of the worst movies of the year to date. Why couldn’t even a little of the energy from that sequence find its way into the rest of the dull proceedings? It must be an international conspiracy.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com