"The International" AKA "Shoot out at the O.K. Guggenhiem"

I have a new habit of going to matinee movies...alone...in the middle of the week. Hi, my name is Annie, and I'm a loser...

watch the first five minutes here:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4062970649/

"If you control the debt, you control EVERYTHING."
"Sometimes you find your destiny on the road you took to avoid it."
"The justice you seek is an unattainable myth."
"What do you want from me?" "I want some fucking justice!!"
"If you kill me there will be hundreds of bankers lining up to take my place..."

Okay some of those lines may seem a bit cheesy, but this movie was NOT....well not completely anyway :)

It was realistic and frightening and well acted and actually achieved being amazing without any gratuitous sex scenes...no wonder Hollywood is keeping it so quiet...its not teenage vampires...or talking dogs...


This movie is about the IBBC, and the rag-tag group of law enforcement agents from NYC, Interpol and Scotland Yard, that go behind their agencies' backs and against the orders of their superiors to uncover a vast capitalistic, warmongering, giant evil bank weapons deal, orchestrated to control the world's conflicts and debts. The conspiracy is out there, they have no bond-like gadgets..the good guys or the bad guys...its kind of a throw back in that aspect to an old Bogart film, just using brains, and good old fashioned rifles and well..OK Uzis... But it was refreshing, if not realistic to see three or four people working international espionage and only one blackberry...I mean they used PAYPHONES...

This is not your regular conspiracy thriller, it takes a different path, with success. Anyone who knows anything is in danger, people are being killed off left and right, there is no one to trust, no one to turn to and no justice in sight....and the biggest baddest shootout that the Guggenheim Museum has ever seen. This movie is epic, and filmed on location around the world, the scenery is a bigger star than Owen. Clive Owen is very convincing as the paranoid, strung out and disillusioned Interpol agent and Naomi Watts isn't great, but this performance is better than "The Ring".

This movie makes a great case for idealism and it's hopelessness...

I fear these gross abuses of capitalism are not all that far fetched...and they are the exact same corruptions that exist in every/any form of government and economy... The corruption of people in power will always breed more corruption, more pain and manipulation of the public, more profiteering, more disillusionment.

Diversion from the movie review into what it made me think about:
I came out of this movie feeling like it was pretty damn good, but also that I am pretty helpless and in general, sad for our world...
With corruption at every level of every organization, have we as a people become so truly evil? No, we haven't become, we have always been...the method isn't even original...
I believe that true and real evil exists and that the honest people in society are being further and further eclipsed by it. The god of self-satisfaction paired with an unprecedented lack of compassion and honesty....it disgusts me and is embodied by our history as a people of war and the current state of war as well as the state of our economy, which will be used to frighten people into surrendering more freedoms.
I think the only real freedom that exists anymore is the freedom of thought.

The hunger for power breeds corruption, and the attainment of it shoots the breeding into the stratosphere. Adam and Eve...they lasted what, a week, before the devil got to them by tempting them to 'be like God'. It seems like the whole world is his playground these days...and true justice IS a myth, at least in this world. Can it be that real justice comes only with death and the final judgement of the individual?

In my heart I admire people like well, Jesus to start with, and saints like Francis, Mother Theresa, Thomas More, people like Gandhi. And for the life of me, I can't think of one single public persona in today's' world that I truly can say that I know without a shadow of a doubt, is not corrupt in some way. For myself, I try to be and act above reproach, and with integrity and honesty. But then again- I have no real power, so have I ever really been tempted to be anything but honest? And in reality, I don't know how well I do at the whole uncorrupted thing. Often I want to quit being an idealist even in my own mind because it is exhausting. Or, I want to quit my job in general because its disheartening to see each day what religion has become to so many people. BUT, then I lose and the devil wins. AND we were told going into all of this life that it wasn't fair, yet I'm still surprised by injustice. Maybe that says something, even if it is only that I can still feel outrage. And, we were told that the harvest is great and the workers few, and I will not go down without a fight!!! :)ooh maybe I'll get an Uzi!!!!

Anyway, back to the movie- I think the great films are the ones that make us think about real issues, and although this was about international intrigue and assassinations and shoot 'em ups, it was also a powerful social commentary. Its most definitely worth seeing.