The International: Hardly Credible But Still Intriguing
If ever there was a time to release a movie about a nefarious bank, it's now.
Is there common ground between James Bond and the Wall Street Journal? To put it another way: Can you make a credible and intriguing movie with complex multinational banking deals undertaking the role of villain, yet somehow have it all boil down to one guy with a gun chasing another guy across a rooftop? The answer is: yes and no. The International is hardly credible but it is intriguing, thanks to the furious concentration with which it is directed by German filmmaker Tom Tykwer, who also presided over the somewhat overly sweaty Run Lola Run and the mesmerizing erotic fable Perfume.
Clive Owen, one of the most fully committed actors working today, is another reason the film manages to seize your full attention for two entertaining hours, even if you depart with a shrug and a scratch of the head. Owen plays a bedraggled Interpol agent, Louis Salinger, who has been kicked out of Scotland Yard while pursuing the activities of the International Bank of Business and Credit, which is involved in buying arms and selling them to African strongmen.
Salinger’s counterpart in New York City, an assistant district attorney (Naomi Watts), joins him in his righteous zeal to unravel the mysteries of the bank but there are no sparks between the two, no snappy give-and-take, and not even much of a friendship. Watts’ character is in it strictly to play the sidekick. She could be a guy and it would make absolutely no difference. She doesn’t really need to be here at all. She does, however, keep alive her amazing crying streak in virtually every role. The woman could do Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 and find a reason to bawl.
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Kyle Smith is a film critic for the the New York Post. His website is at www.kylesmithonline.com.
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6 Comments
1. Alex:Financial Derivatives are banking instruments that have little value backing them up. These are basically bundled debts rolled into a package that banks sold to one another, creating the illusion of value where none existed. For example a derivative that would be sold for 500 Billion actually had less than 5 million dollars in assets. It was a creation of the bank system Vis a vis the Federal reserve system of fractional banking. ( the Federal Reserve can “create” money by simply printing it based on multiples of asset base. For example they require only 1 billion in assets to print 500 Billion in paper money)
As of today there are approximately 560 TRILLION in derivatives held by mostly European and American Banks, Asian Banks didnt play the game of musical chairs. There is less than 1 Trillion in assets actually backing these derivatives. What the banking system tried to do is copy the Federal Reserve system in “creating” money from nothing. Now the Banks are stuck with trillions in paper while the asset base that backed them ( real estate mortgages)collapsed.
The fraud was exposed when banks refused to lend cash to customers or to each other as individuals began to pull funds out of the banking system. The “Books” that claimed a banks assets were simple accounting creations, columns of numbers based on worthless paper. As of today the US or EU governments do not have access to the true Nature of the Banking system, nobody knows which banks own what amounts of these derivatives.
This is one reason Gold skyrocketed to 950 an ounce, and will probably continue to 1,500-2,000 if banks are allowed to continue perpetuating the fraud by EU and US governments. The International banking system is a fraud, and it will get far worse in the near future.
This is the Reality of the International Banking System. Is has been building for decades with BCCI and other fraudulent banking arrangements allowed by US and EU regulators. If anything the movie probably does not go far enough ( i have not seen it yet), if we take the example of the drug trade people will kill each other for a few thousand. What will people for for a few trillion?
Feb 13, 2009 - 6:42 am 2. marcus waldron:“Hardly credible?”
How old are you.
Never heard of BCCI — the bank in the movie is anagram of it — the Bank of Credit and Commerce INTERNATIONAL?
Feb 13, 2009 - 8:01 am 3. ashok:Thank you for this review! I like Owen’s work a lot – he’s awesome in “Children of Men,” and I want to watch “Inside Man” again b/c it’s one of those “could be one of the most important films ever made but isn’t seen by anyone” things, and I couldn’t figure out how it was supposed to work exactly.
Not sure I want to spend the money to see this one, but its good to know on some level it works.
Feb 13, 2009 - 9:45 am 4. Susan Katz Keating:If nothing else, it’s a switch from the cliche we all could script in our sleep: The Army Did It! Glad to see the pop culture machine switch villains for a day.
Feb 13, 2009 - 11:14 am 5. DavidN:Actually, I liked Vantage Point for what it was, though I was a bit annoyed that they spent as little time as they did explaining who the bad guys were. It appeared that they were supposed to be Arab terrorists; in this case then perhaps the studio was worried it would appear anti-Arab or anti-Muslim if it played it up.
Taken is a much more typical, straightforward bad guy vs. good guy thriller, but it’s also good for what it is. It actually spends a considerable length of time building up the characters before getting to the action part of the picture. It also has an unusual sub-type of bad guy, Albanian mobsters (I’m not giving much away, you find this out early in the film) and some clever action that, among other things, emphasizes how ruthless Neeson’s character is in the pursuit of those who kidnapped his daughter. There have been other, much worse action movies.
Feb 13, 2009 - 1:12 pm 6. Danny:You obviously missed the link… International Bank of Business and Credit versus the very real Bank of Credit and Commerce International which pretty much did a similar thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International
Feb 16, 2009 - 6:31 pm