Reay Jespersen

Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is an Interpol agent who’s working with Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) on what’s become an extended investigation into a mega-bank dealing in the international weapons trade. The problem is that everyone who gets close to the truth - or is willing to tell it - is showing up conveniently dead. Added to that, both Salinger and Whitman are getting threats of another nature from their respective superiors: either make this case stick, or it has to be dropped once and for all. Neither of them is willing to simply drop the case, but how far will they go to bring justice to the guilty?

Though The International sets the audience loose into the story right off the bat - Salinger and Whitman are actively investigating the bank in order to secure their case - it still has a broad development arc. It doesn’t follow the usual patterns of movie formats, but instead keeps setting up our heroes for success before they’re confronted with a failure roadblock, which takes them on a detour to apparent success before another failure roadblock turns up, etc. Then the filmmakers throw in an extended gunfight that seems oddly juxtaposed with the scenes around it, as though it were tacked on after the fact (as it perhaps was; early screnings determined people wanted more action in it, and what little action was shot later on seems to have been spliced pretty ham-fistedly into the story), which only helps underscore the odd pacing of the movie.
It’s perhaps from this unconventional approach that the climax a) doesn’t feel as climactic as previous scenes had and b) rather fizzles. It ends with what can’t truly be said to be a deus ex machina moment, but feels almost that unsatisfying anyway for it not ending the way it feels it should end. And really, when you have people sitting for two hours for a movie these days, they’re going to want a solid ending. What we’re given instead didn’t feel like an outright cheat, but it did fall pretty flat given the lengthy story and process we’ve seen.

If you’re a big Clive Owen fan, The International’s worth checking out at some point. If you’re a conspiracy or thriller fan, you’d probably do just as well to take a pass. After all, Angels & Demons is just a few months away…