Movie Review - The International

The trailer for The International had me anticipating seeing this movie. Looked like it was going to be a high action, intense thriller with great acting.

I guess one out of three isn't bad.

Clive Owen and Naomi Watts are great in this movie. You don't see them as overacting and you genuinely like their characters and look forward to their presence on the screen.

The photography was beautiful. Never thought I would want to go to Berlin anytime soon, but some of the scenery that you see is just so unique that I think it might actually be interesting to visit. And a few of the aerial shots were so well done that I almost felt like I was there.

However, that was basically all that I could find that was good about The International.

The most annoying thing had to be the score. During 98% of the film, you were given the impression that something super intense was about to happen, so involuntarily your heart starts racing, preparing you for this wonderful event to happen and then it never does. And then when you finally DO have that action scene, you are already so numb to the previously intense building score that it just isn't fulfilling.

A close second was Naomi Watts' hair. She is a very pretty girl and you look forward to seeing her in each scene. But her bright blonde hair in comparison to her drab colored clothes and the rest of the cast's wardrobe and hair color just stuck out so much it reminded me of the red dress in Schindler's List because it is so distracting that you have trouble focusing on what is going on around her.

Maybe that was just me.

A definite third annoyance is that I couldn't tell you what this movie was about. I am fairly certain that I did not miss any of it, and (except for getting distracted by the music and her hair) I was paying attention, but the plot was all over the place that I really have no idea what the purpose of it was supposed to be. Something about some corporation that was funding the purchase of missles and tracking down the individuals responsible and then the people that are conducting the investigation are getting picked off one by one, so you have people chasing around other people and everyone has guns and that's about all I got out of it.

There were some action scenes and quite a few were pretty bloody but there were too many slow spots for it to be called an action film.

And there were supposedly intense moments that some people might say would make it a thriller (the score would certainly make you believe that), but it wasn't interesting enough to be that, either.

There were two interesting scenes that stuck out that I liked:

1. They were looking at two bullet holes in a wall/pillar/post/whatever it was and there were some tiny flags on the ground that people had been waving at the rally where the shooting had taken place and she tore the flags off the small poles and then pushed the poles through the bullet holes to figure out the bullet trajectory (a la CSI) so that was really neat.

2. The shootout at the Guggenheim that everyone is posting about was dumb yet fascinating at the same time. Dumb because it was just a bunch of people shooting at each other with machine guns for a very long period of time (I want to say it was a 10 minute scene) but fascinating because with each gun shot, you could see the blanket of bullet holes appearing, almost beautifying the various walls and ceiling.

But two interesting scenes do not make for a good movie.

The ending they sort of showed in the trailer, but of course it doesn't end up exactly as you see it. I was looking forward to that scene to see what took place after the trailer cuts it off, but it was disappointing. Not at all the rush of adrenaline scene that you think it's going to be.

I was having a very hard time not walking out, but I just had to stay for this fabulous ending that was going to tie everything together and make it worth my time to have seen it. In the meantime, though, I was constantly checking my phone to see how much more time it was going to be before it was over and I could leave the theater. As soon as the credits started rolling, I left, so I don't know if there was anything interesting after the credits, but honestly...I really couldn't have cared less at that point.

Such a shame, too, because the next movie I saw had a trailer for The International so I got to see it again and remembering the scenes again from the movie, itself and comparing to the snippets they show in the trailer, the trailer makes it look so well thought out and interesting. But it just wasn't.

I checked IMDB and it's getting a 7/10 rating. Makes me question if I saw the same movie these other people saw.

Anyone care to defend this movie?

Vixy :]