I’ve never been a huge sports fan, but imagine that if your favorite player, at the crucial point in the game, missed the free throw or strikes out, the pain is felt a little more strongly when you know that a great talent didn’t live up to your very personal expectations. That’s how I feel about Tom Tykwer’s latest film, The International.  Tykver is, in my estimation, on of the most talented directors working today. Yea, Run, Lola, Run was great. But Heaven is an underappreciated masterpiece, and I suspect that even those who didn’t care for Perfume: The Story of a Murderer would admit to having been effected by its bold and inventive cinematic sensuality for a long time since watching it – probably still today.
The International, though, seems to collapse under the weight of its own earnestness. While the film is meant to be a Clive Owen action movie on the outside, Tykwer is understandably drawn to the say-it-isn’t-so ideas underneath: that capitalism, specifically the largest, most powerful international banks, keep the world dressed in conflict because it is good for business. That when developing countries want to annihilate one another, the debt created allows the financiers to have a perpetual power that transcends the trivialities of who wins and takes over the government. Â It is heavy stuff. So heavy, in fact, that it fits the film with a pair of concrete boots and tells it to swim across the Rhine.
Perhaps sensing that the film was taking itself too seriously, Tykwer orchestrates a shootout at the Guggenheim Museum that is so outrageously, marvelously over-the-top that Matthew Barney, if he saw it, is likely to never recover from the jealousy and excitement. The sequence strains to fit into the film, though, and it surely cannot rescue it from its lack of tone and unsure purpose. It’s too bad, but every batter gets another chance at the plate, and like any fan, I’m still looking forward to the next time Tykwer takes a swing.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet... Leave one in the space below.
Leave a Comment