The International (15)
Here's a film with its finger on the pulse, its eye on the zeitgeist, or some combination of the two: the baddies in this globe-trotting thriller are bankers, and they do a lot worse than lose your money.,/p>
Clive Owen, wearing a scowl but no tie (the rebel), plays an Interpol officer in hot pursuit of an international bank that's been funding organised crime and illegal coups. Naomi Watts plays a Manhattan DA with whom Owen is liaising – entirely professionally, of course. The chase pinballs between Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul, in the course of which Eric Warren Singer's script serves up some unpleasant insights – global conflict is kept going through banks' willingness to handle their debt – and one tremendous setpiece gun-battle in the pristine white galleries of the Guggenheim Museum. It's reasonably efficient, passably entertaining, and strenuously playing catch-up with the Bourne movies: flat-footed Owen doesn't look as good as Matt Damon sprinting through city streets, and the editing doesn't match Paul Greengrass's whiplash pace.
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