Owen embodies an Interpol agent named Lou Salinger who has been on the trail of a corrupt bank for years. He works with the district attorney’s office in Manhattan and his partner in the movie is none other than Naomi Watts who plays the character of Ella Whitman, a district attorney from New York who joins forces with the obsessed loner agent in order to stop crime. The movie is about a European bank that is involved in international weapons trading and employs killers to ensure that business continues as desired. Most importantly, the idea of this film is actually based on a real story, that of Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

 

Directed by Tom Tykwer, “The International” turns out to be a talky, mostly slow-moving dull film except for towards the end when it gets revived by an exciting museum gunfight.

 

Tykwer, who also directed “Run Lola Run,” thought of it as one of those conspiracy movies about widespread corruption at high levels, quite similar to the dark political thrillers in which moral ambiguity and human complexity do not usually go with action movies. In fact, this is actually a message movie disguised as a suspense film. Or is it the other way around?