The International
Directed by Tom Tykwer. Written by Eric Singer. With Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ulrich Thomsen, and Brian F. O'Byrne. (R)
The International, a new espionage thriller from the director of Run Lola Run, gives new meaning to the term popcorn movie. Usually used to describe the enjoyably brainless blockbusters that crowd the theaters every summer, this painfully brainless film provides a wholly different reason for stopping at the concession stand: to make sure you'll have something to throw at the screen.
The usually dependable Clive Owen (Children of Men, Closer) stars as Louis Salinger, an ex-Scotland Yard detective now working for the financial branch of Interpol. We can tell he's passionate about his work because, like all serious detectives, the walls around his cluttered desk are papered with photos of suspects and their victims. This is so that, during moments of frustration, he can rip down a picture of a murder victim before using his free arm to shove everything off the top of his desk.
Salinger is deep into an investigation of the International Bank of Business and Credit, a global operation he suspects of all manner of shady things: murder, drug- and gun-running, more murder. Sadly, he isn't trying to uncover why first-time screenwriter Eric Singer saddled his villainous cabal with such a forgettable handle. Ian Fleming may have been hammy, but when James Bond fought SPECTRE—aka the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion—you at least knew what you were getting in a villain: revenge! Extortion! Death rays from outer space! Here—despite an early assassination by cyanide—most of the threat comes in the form of interest point variance and—yawn—strategies for debt control.
Helping Salinger slog through the paperwork is Manhattan prosecutor Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts). If you're wondering why a lawyer from New York is dodging bullets in Istanbul, the answer is that Clive Owen is not a knockout blond who can look great prancing around rooftops in high heels. Thankfully, the script doesn't include a budding romance, but that's one of the few clich?s left uncovered.
As IBBC head Jonas Skarssen, Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen is a calculating presence, but it's a performance in a role well beneath his abilities. Thomsen, who made such an impact a decade ago with his star turn in the early Dogme 95 film The Celebration, seems to flummox most directors; he's consistently cast in roles like this one, roles that leave precious little room for an actor to stretch. It doesn't help that his right-hand man Wilhelm is portrayed by Armin Mueller-Stahl, an actor who brings a stale whiff of the Cold War to every role he plays—when he and Salinger have a long discussion about Wilhelm's move from communism to a bloody capitalism, it feels like a desperate grab for highbrow legitimacy in a movie that is anything but.
Oddly, the one truly compelling figure in The International is something of a bit player: the assassin used by the IBBC to clean up their frequent messes. "The Consultant" is a phantom killer, and his cold-blooded machinations crackle with the tension the rest of the film is supposed to have. He's played by Brian F. O'Byrne, an Irish actor whose gentle demeanor—he was the priest in Million Dollar Baby—is used to great effect here. Indeed, he's the one character in the film who doesn't turn out to be exactly what you expect him to be.
One problem with a small note like that, though, is that it's overpowered by scenes like the film's climactic shootout in the Guggenheim's famous spiraling rotunda. For close to 15 minutes, a dozen men with automatic weapons blaze away in the heart of Manhattan; the police show up only after Tykwer has collected every last angle of the iconic architecture (actually a gigantic set built overseas). Like so much of The International, it beggars belief. It's possible, though, that the film's biggest problem is a simple matter of timing. With our banks failing at a historic rate, it might be too much to ask audiences to believe they could be this smart.
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Also this week: The Northampton Committee to Stop the War in Iraq continues its free Friday night film series at Northampton's Media Education Foundation with a 7 p.m. screening of Yung Chang's documentary Up The Yangtze. UMass Assistant Professor of History Sigrid Schmalzer leads a group discussion about the film.
The Yangtze is China's most magnificent waterway, but changing priorities in the country have led to its death—or at least the death of a way of life for the millions that lived along its banks—at the hands of the Three Gorges Dam. The reason is simple: energy. The hydroelectric output of the dam will produce enough energy to power dozens of cities. But the rising tide won't carry all boats, and for those millions of displaced people—many living rustic lives and seemingly unready for the massive change on the horizon—the Three Gorges means catastrophe.
To tell his story, the director focuses on a pair of young Chinese who find work on the tour ships that trawl the river, giving rich Westerners a look at a disappearing life. Watching the tourist life on these ships, whose workers know Western prejudices all too well, is enough to make one cringe for our image in the world, and the deleterious effect our conspicuous consumption is having on other cultures.
One of the film's most effective moments, however, comes onshore. As a shopkeeper is being interviewed, he loses control, breaking down in tears of anger and frustration. For him, the forced resettlement has brought beatings, the loss of his financial means, and more. "It's hard being a human," he says, "but being a common person in China is more difficult."
Up The Yangtze is likely to be the most lasting film document of life along the river. Just over a year after its release, the work called for in the original plan for the Three Gorges was completed; the Chinese government now plans to add six additional generators to the project. As an accounting of the true cost of the dam, Up The Yangtze is damning.
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If you feel like controversy is missing from your life, then—and I never thought I'd say this—Turners Falls is the place to be. On Feb. 24 at 7 p.m., the film Gaza Strip—shot in 2001, during the early days of the current intifada—will be shown in a free screening at The Brick House as part of the Movements for Self-Determination film series hosted by Undergrowth Farm.
On the film's website, director James Longley writes: "[This] was my first trip to the Middle East; all of my previous international filmmaking experience took place in Russia… . [My] plan was to find a main character to follow—probably a stone-throwing kid or an ambulance driver—who would be able to give a narration and framework to the events taking place. … I found the film's principal voice in the person of Mohammed Hejazi, a 13-year-old paper boy in Gaza City. He was the first person I filmed inside the Gaza Strip. One afternoon early in my stay I walked out to Karni Crossing, a place in east Gaza where many children have been killed and wounded by Israeli soldiers while throwing stones at tanks, and the kids there pushed him in front of the camera as their spokesperson. It was no accident: Mohammed could talk the ears off a donkey, and he has a great deal to say."
Lana Habash of the New England Committee to Defend Palestine—whose website openly opposes the existence of what they label the "colonial-settler state of 'Israel'" and includes articles such as "For Palestine To Live, Israel Must Die" (sample passage: "The holocaust is an old song that no one wants to hear any more.")—will attend the screening to answer questions and discuss the tumultuous history of Israel and the Palestinians. Controversy, indeed.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
