The International

Review

The Guggenheim’s white interiors and open, circular ramps make a great setting for the long, bloody shoot-out at the center of the paranoid conspiracy thriller The International. As he proved in Run Lola Run, German director Tom Tykwer has a knack for whizzing in sync with his characters, and there are one or two shots where the Interpol hero (Clive Owen and his stubble) hurtles along the curving, descending ramp while firing across the museum at assassins, who in turn are moving on the same trajectory firing at him. It’s good enough that you forget how much better Brian De Palma could do it. The rest is a slow road to nowhere, less clunky than The Interpreter but bogged down by its own cynicism. This is another movie that says you can’t defeat a nefarious multitentacled multinational colossus if you stay within the system: The only hope is vigilante justice. At one point, the hero is thisclose to getting the goods on the big bad banker without having to shoot him when a swarm of bats suddenly gives him away. An intentional metaphor? As in The Dark Knight, the message seems to be saying you’d have to be bats to think you can make a difference. — David Edelstein