"The difference between real life and fiction is, fiction has to make sense."
So states a character in "The International."
It's too bad director Tom Tykwer and screenwriter Eric Warren Singer didn't heed that advice. Their film makes little sense, and the line quoted above is one of the more eloquent ones in the ham-fisted, dialogue-heavy film.
It's one of those movies where the characters tend to explain what's going on or spout platitudes they think are eminently profound. Example: "Sometimes a man can meet his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." The filmmakers loved this bit so much they use it twice.
Even the main characters' last names are preposterous. Clive Owen plays Interpol agent Louis Salinger (as in author J.D.). He teams up (for some odd reason) with a Manhattan assistant district attorney played by Naomi Watts named Eleanor Whitman (as in poet Walt). Why not Marx (as in Groucho) and Lennon (as in John)? Or, even more apropos to these characters, Abbot and Costello?
Tykwer broke through 10 years ago with the kinetic, frenetic "Run, Lola, Run" but hasn't delivered anything that lived up to his promise with that film, and "The International" is the nadir of his career. Up to this point, anyway.
This is Singer's first screenplay, and he also has a bit part billed as "cashier." If his writing doesn't improve, he may want to look around for a real cashier position.
"The International" tries hard to be a film in the mode of "Three Days of the Condor" or "The Parallax View," but it's not in the same league as either of those.
The story is loosely based on a 1991 scandal that involved the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a Pakistan-based bank with clients such as Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega.
In the film, the title character bank is called the IBBC. IBBC is a financial institution that invests in nuclear weapons and is willing to fund all sides of international conflict looking for loans.
The bank employs a "consultant" whose job is to kill any nosy busybodies who start asking too many questions. The consultant wears a leg brace, a fact that's convenient to the convoluted plot when agent Salinger and D.A. Whitman have to track him down.
The hunter becomes the prey when IBBC fears the consultant may go to the authorities and spill the beans on the bean counters.
The IBBC hires a group of assassins and, after Salinger and Whitman fly around to enough cities for this film to be classed a travelogue, the climax occurs in a 15-minute scene too derisory for words.
The crazed shoot-'em-up takes place at the Guggenheim Museum ... during business hours. The Guggenheim set was recreated on a huge sound stage in Berlin and a disclaimer at the end of the film states: "The fictional exhibition depicted in the main galleries of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was not curated by nor an actual exhibition of the museum." Seems they were worried about people thinking they would be so tacky as to display some of the artwork that is shown in the mockup.
Armin Mueller-Stahl, who plays the mentor of the assassin on the run, provides the only bright spot in "The International." He manages to make most of his dialogue sound less absurd than the other actors, and he makes a decent point when he says it's not about the arms race but "whoever controls the debt controls everything."
That's a salient point in 2009, and the basic premise of "The International" is great considering the number of banks in deep trouble.
With a better script and director it could have been an engaging, thought-provoking thriller instead of the "no interest" two hours invested by the audience.
Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield freelance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.
