The International: Hardly Credible But Still Intriguing
If ever there was a time to release a movie about a nefarious bank, it’s now. And yet the movie barely lays a finger on the financial industry. Even if you assume that banks do wield the levers of power, that their mission is — as the movie puts it — to get us “addicted to debt,” and that they purposely foment civil wars in Africa to advance their own interests, that’s still no excuse for banks to shoot high officials in public or send a dozen men armed with machine guns to destroy the interior of a famous building in front of hundreds of witnesses. That’s the whole point of an evil institution. It doesn’t have to get its hands dirty. Who needs assassins when you’ve got lobbyists?
Without shootouts and villains, though, you can’t have a thriller, and it isn’t often a movie turns geopolitics into an absorbing adult adventure. The International operates on a higher level than most movies simply because it functions in a world that vaguely resembles our own, instead of relying on the ridiculously fanciful twists of last year’s abrasively idiotic Vantage Point. (This season’s Euro-thriller Taken made Vantage Point look like North by Northwest.) The trail of deception, vengeance, and murder, along with the cyclone of chaos that emanates from the most placid surroundings in The International‘s central scene, is carefully calibrated. However the final act doesn’t stir much interest. We’ve long since learned that the bank is so sinister that its depravity will continue regardless. Yet a one-on-one chase is exactly what the film expects us to fall for. It also wants us to accept some questionable philosophizing.
Nonetheless, Tykwer’s muscular craftsmanship is enough to carry the film. The International can’t compete with the great 70s thrillers it attempts to emulate, but it’s a dogged and sober work — far more enticing than the usual grab bag of stunts in other films of the same genre.
The International
Directed by Tom Tykwer
Starring: Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl
3 stars/ 4
120 minutes/Rated R
Financial Derivatives are banking instruments that have little value backing them up. These are basically bundled debts rolled into a package that banks sold to one another, creating the illusion of value where none existed. For example a derivative that would be sold for 500 Billion actually had less than 5 million dollars in assets. It was a creation of the bank system Vis a vis the Federal reserve system of fractional banking. ( the Federal Reserve can “create” money by simply printing it based on multiples of asset base. For example they require only 1 billion in assets to print 500 Billion in paper money)
As of today there are approximately 560 TRILLION in derivatives held by mostly European and American Banks, Asian Banks didnt play the game of musical chairs. There is less than 1 Trillion in assets actually backing these derivatives. What the banking system tried to do is copy the Federal Reserve system in “creating” money from nothing. Now the Banks are stuck with trillions in paper while the asset base that backed them ( real estate mortgages)collapsed.
The fraud was exposed when banks refused to lend cash to customers or to each other as individuals began to pull funds out of the banking system. The “Books” that claimed a banks assets were simple accounting creations, columns of numbers based on worthless paper. As of today the US or EU governments do not have access to the true Nature of the Banking system, nobody knows which banks own what amounts of these derivatives.
This is one reason Gold skyrocketed to 950 an ounce, and will probably continue to 1,500-2,000 if banks are allowed to continue perpetuating the fraud by EU and US governments. The International banking system is a fraud, and it will get far worse in the near future.
This is the Reality of the International Banking System. Is has been building for decades with BCCI and other fraudulent banking arrangements allowed by US and EU regulators. If anything the movie probably does not go far enough ( i have not seen it yet), if we take the example of the drug trade people will kill each other for a few thousand. What will people for for a few trillion?
“Hardly credible?”
How old are you.
Never heard of BCCI — the bank in the movie is anagram of it — the Bank of Credit and Commerce INTERNATIONAL?
Thank you for this review! I like Owen’s work a lot – he’s awesome in “Children of Men,” and I want to watch “Inside Man” again b/c it’s one of those “could be one of the most important films ever made but isn’t seen by anyone” things, and I couldn’t figure out how it was supposed to work exactly.
Not sure I want to spend the money to see this one, but its good to know on some level it works.
If nothing else, it’s a switch from the cliche we all could script in our sleep: The Army Did It! Glad to see the pop culture machine switch villains for a day.
Actually, I liked Vantage Point for what it was, though I was a bit annoyed that they spent as little time as they did explaining who the bad guys were. It appeared that they were supposed to be Arab terrorists; in this case then perhaps the studio was worried it would appear anti-Arab or anti-Muslim if it played it up.
Taken is a much more typical, straightforward bad guy vs. good guy thriller, but it’s also good for what it is. It actually spends a considerable length of time building up the characters before getting to the action part of the picture. It also has an unusual sub-type of bad guy, Albanian mobsters (I’m not giving much away, you find this out early in the film) and some clever action that, among other things, emphasizes how ruthless Neeson’s character is in the pursuit of those who kidnapped his daughter. There have been other, much worse action movies.
You obviously missed the link… International Bank of Business and Credit versus the very real Bank of Credit and Commerce International which pretty much did a similar thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International