Wednesday, February 18, 2009

The International

I went to see The International tonight after reading quite a lot about the film’s opening during the Berlin International Film Festival in early February. Plus being a big fan of director Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run and actor Clive Owen helped in the decision to watch this movie during a time when the list of interesting movies currently in the cinemas is ridiculously long.

Anyway, while the story is off to somewhat of a slow start the pace picks up after about 35 minutes and goes on to include some truly great action scenes and very nice locations for the unfolding plot. The highlight is undoubtedly an extensive shootout in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. The film also makes great use of the locations such as Berlin, NYC and Istanbul the characters visit. Plus there are two relatively slow on-foot chases which are a nice change from the insanely-fast-cut action sequences one sees way too often.

Apart from the slow start the only slight downside of The International are some of the dialogues. Often they look like the actors / characters are trying too hard which makes things look overly artificial.

All in all this was a very enjoyable movie and definitely among the better action flicks I’ve seen in the past year or so.

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