Eye Candy #131 - "The International"

The International: Almost too low-key for its own good and awful timely in this day and age to have a bank as the “villain”, this is actually a solid little thriller about a financial institution up to its eyeballs in the funding of war and misery, the Interpol and other law enforcement officers out to expose them, and the lengths to which the bank will go to defend itself. Clive Owen is Interpol agent Louis Sallinger who works with Manhattan district attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) to find the International Bank of Business and Commerce (IBBC) involved in the proliferation of small arms in third world countries, aimed at destabilizing governments and controlling the financial debt that such armed conflicts inevitably create. They travel around the world to expose the IBBC’s operation and find someone within the organization who can blow the lid off the group. The film isn’t perfect, mostly because Sallinger and Whitman, as heroes, are aloof and hard to relate to (it’s hard to root for people you barely understand and know), but the film clips right along with good pacing and there is one stand-out gunfight in the Guggenheim museum that’s worth a look. The IBBC is the thinnest of veiled references to real corrupt bank BCCI, Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which has been described as the largest bank fraud in history. Woodchuck sez, “Worth a look.”