The International: More Than a Brain Full

I’m a bit confused by the new Clive Owens movie, ‘The International’.  As I looked around at the usual “Monday after work” crowd who were trying to catch an afternoon discounted movie before dinner, I noticed that most of them wouldn’t get much sleep because of the movie’s plot.  The plot was about as confusing as that last sentence.

The point is that ‘The International’ is a well acted, mystery thriller that some big wig saw as a draft and said, “Where is the shootout?  Where is the chase scene?  Where is the gore?”  That resulted in an over the top gun battle in the Guggenheim Museum in New York.  I even joked to my wife that “… the Guggenheim was a great museum to go to until it got all shot up like that.”  I’m actually surprised that there wasn’t any nudity in this film.  John Woo helped produce the movie, so the nudity wasn’t that important.

This is a complicated movie with some well thought out dialogue (Owens gets all the philosophical lines) and some fine thespians doing their job.  The problem is – it’s far too confusing to get the point across.

When my wife and I left the theater, she said, “OK, so who were the bad guys?”  I replied, “Everyone wearing a suit.”  It’s true.  No more “white hat / black hat” character recognition.  Today, the guy in the suit is evil and the disheveled outcast who has the perpetual two-day beard stubble is our hero.  So what’s the problem with the movie?

‘The International’ was the splicing of a true mystery with some idiotic purposeless gun battles and gore scenes.  The Guggenheim shootout was way over the top.  If you like a good mystery, then the one line from Armin Mueller-Stahl spills the beans about the flaw in this movie.  His line, while wearing a suit, is, “Do you know the difference between fiction and non-fiction?  Fiction has to make sense.”  That sums up the Guggenheim shootout scene.  It didn’t make sense so it must be real.

Consider that educators believe 10 minutes of learning coupled with a minute or two of physical activity is one of the best ways to learn.  It simulates life at home – watch 10 minutes of TV, jump up during the two minutes of commercials, grab a snack, hit the bathroom, and be back before the next scene begins.  The only way a continuous two hour movie can accomplish the same thing is by splicing the boredom and confusion with shooting, chasing, bleeding, or sex.  Maybe we could call the process “Sho-Cha-BS.”

Don’t get me wrong, I liked ‘The International’.  I like watching the video chess game played out before me.  I like keeping up with the plot.  I enjoy the cryptic dialogue that twists your thinking one way only to be surprised by the exact opposite.

My father would have loved this movie.  He would watch “Perry Mason,” when I was growing up.  After 5 minutes into the show, he would point at the screen and say, “He did it!”  I would always ask, “How do you know?”  Eventually, I saw the pattern.

‘The International’ has a bit of a pattern too.  The problem is they’ve mixed too many genres together.  What we have is the Jason Borne trilogy (chase scenes galore) combined with the Mission: Impossible series (confusing storyline) sprinkled with actors with European accents (ala James Bond) and a finale right out of the Godfather (“Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”).  In other words, its purpose was for producers to see if they could market Clive Owens (and possibly Naomi Watts with her American accent) into a series of sequels.  Sad to say, it’s not going to work.

The customer wants entertainment when they see a film.  Watching ‘The International’ is like rifling through accounting spread sheets looking for where the mistake was made.  It could take days to figure out this movie.  It’s an exciting mystery, but not for the complicated story.  The challenge for me became predicting who got killed next.  After not recognizing the two actors at the beginning of the movie, I channeled my father, pointed my finger at the screen, leaned over to my wife and said, “He’s gonna die.”  How do you know” She asked?  Before I could explain, the guy was having a heart attack outside the Berlin Airport.  “See.”

That’s just my view.  3 out of 5 stars.