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Title: The International (2009)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Clive Owen | ... | ||
| Naomi Watts | ... | ||
| Armin Mueller-Stahl | ... | ||
| Ulrich Thomsen | ... | ||
| Brían F. O'Byrne | ... | ||
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Michel Voletti | ... | |
| Patrick Baladi | ... | ||
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Jay Villiers | ... | |
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Fabrice Scott | ... |
Nicolai Yeshinski
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| Haluk Bilginer | ... | ||
| Luca Barbareschi | ... |
Umberto Calvini
(as Luca Giorgio Barbareschi)
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| Alessandro Fabrizi | ... |
Inspector Alberto Cerutti
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| Felix Solis | ... |
Detective Iggy Ornelas
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| Jack McGee | ... |
Detective Bernie Ward
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| Nilaja Sun | ... |
Detective Gloria Hubbard
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In The International, Interpol Agent Louis Salinger and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman are determined to bring to justice one of the world's most powerful banks. Uncovering illegal activities including money laundering, arms trading, and the destabilization of governments, Salinger and Whitman's investigation takes them from Berlin to Milan to New York and to Istanbul. Finding themselves in a high-stakes chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk as the bank will stop at nothing - even murder - to continue financing terror and war. Written by production
The International provides a breath of fresh air to fans of thrillers. It is a thriller film that rarely comes out of a big studio these days. It is a film more in style of Hitchcock with the mystery being the film's guiding force rather than frenetically stitched together action scenes. The Bourne Trilogy touched base on this type of thing, but still resorted to a largely conventional plot. While being an enjoyable and smarter-than-usual series of action movies they were nowhere near as intricate than their source material, which really dove into some seriously dark territory plot-wise with things that big budget thriller films almost never dare to touch.
This film does just that type of thing. It presents, as the villain, an institution that is pervasive in the world and most peoples lives. We deal with it almost everyday and we need to as it holds one of the things that we need everyday - money. From an observer viewpoint on this type of relationship it is easy to see which side has great power over the other and like all power, this one can also be abused. Perhaps this plot can turn people off since they refuse to believe that something that they trust with literally everything they've got, could be so untrustworthy. Or perhaps they've never seen or heard about such a thing before so therefore it can't be true. Either way, it is self-imposed mental limitation which will doom someone to eventually liking only one type of movie and/or story. Movies and stories, at their core, are presenting new ideas and patterns and The International doesn't do that with spectacular action scenes, but with it's fresh plot.
Crooks usually rob banks, but who gets robbed if the bank is the crook? That is the film's central question and the answer provided is also a bit more complex than could be expected. The path the answer doesn't always move at a breakneck pace nor are many of the answers provided fully satisfactory.
In addition to the winding plot the film features a spectacular shootout that results in a world class art museum getting trashed. It's a bit of the old action movie formula that almost never gets old, but overall the movie is an Anti-Formula to the every Hollywood Action Movie Formula. --- 9/10
BsCDb Classification: 13+ --- violence