Just when you think you’ve seen every possible derivation of a gunfight that action thriller makers can conceive, along comes Tom Tykwer’s The International. They shoot up the Guggenheim! Good guys chasing bad guys completely decimate the Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, riddling it with holes in the spiral walls and balconies and destroying priceless art. Surprisingly enough keeping collateral damage to a minimum and managing to throw in a few seconds of comic relief as well. Even if you’re not a Clive Owen fan and are not crazy about action thrillers based on international corporate corruption, that one gunfight alone is worth the price of admission.

Tykwer, best known for his films Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and Run Lola Run, basically makes Run Clive Run. The hunky British actor, playing Louis Salinger, a jaded Interpol agent, tries to bring an evil international bank to justice battling what else but international corruption along the way.  It seems the bank has become a sort of world power in it’s own right, making major arms deals and disrupting foreign governments, assassinating anyone who gets in its way. Naomi Watts, playing New York attorney Eleanor Whitmore, is also trying to break the bank, as it’s a known money launderer for a huge crime family. Together Whitmore and Salinger race across exotic locals mostly in Europe and Turkey, and take a substantial licking but keep on ticking.

Action is tight and easy to follow without being predictable. The cliché of using the romantic interest as a hostage is, thankfully, avoided. This bank takes no prisoners--it blithely murders anyone who stands in its way. The amount of power the bank wields comes as no surprise to those involved in global finance in real life. It’s frightening to get a glimpse of how much they control, and it makes for a great action thriller.

Rated R

—Lisa Johnson Mandell