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Average User Score: 7 (14 sources)

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goshwow

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it starts slow and simmers its way into an epic gunfight scene that, despite what the poster leads you to believe, doesn't include nicole kidman's character in any way shape or form. the plot is also confusing, needing a whole website to explain...
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it starts slow and simmers its way into an epic gunfight scene that, despite what the poster leads you to believe, doesn't include nicole kidman's character in any way shape or form. the plot is also confusing, needing a whole website to explain its premise, because you'll have a terribly hard time trying to figure it out on your own. oh, and the ending? anti-climatic at best. skip it.

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Posted feb 17, 2009 2:27 pm pt

• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  75
  Clive Owen makes a semi-believable hero, not performing too many feats that are physically unlikely. As the plucky DA, Naomi Watts wisely plays up her character's legal smarts and plays down the inevitable possibility that the two of them will fall in love.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] Boston Globe
  
  75
  I can promise you a fairly good thriller with mixed-bag elements: preposterous plot, smartly elegant direction, one of the worst recent performances by a major actress, and a dynamite stick of an action scene that can stand close to the greats (the car chase in "The French Connection," the single-take battle sequence in "Children of Men") and from which the movie never really recovers.

  by Ty Burr | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  75
  Won't go down as an action thriller for the record books, but it's a pretty good one for right now. First of all, the villain is a bank. How's that for timing?

  by Mick LaSalle | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Hollywood Reporter
  
  70
  Punctuated with bursts of explosive energy, this is a contained, cerebral film.

  by Sura Wood | Read Full Review »
• [+] NPR
  
  70
  Tykwer being something of an architecture freak, controlling Third World debt also requires a trip to the rooftops of Istanbul, to Zaha Hadid's BMW factory, and to Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin. All great fun in a story that's more kinetic than compelling.

  by Bob Mondello | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  70
  The compulsively watchable Owen makes for an ideal leading man of both action and angst. The film's eye-popping set piece, a shootout at the Guggenheim Museum, is an extravagantly choreographed valentine to philistines everywhere.

  by Ann Hornaday | Read Full Review »
• [+] Salon.com
  
  70
  This is a thriller where the cutting, even in most of the action sequences, is meticulous but leisurely. The elaborate set pieces are so beautifully worked out that you could take them apart, shot by shot, and fit the pieces back together like an intricate Chinese puzzle.

  by Stephanie Zacharek | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  67
  For all its impressive set pieces and breathless momentum, it's neither passionate nor urgent.

  by Sean Axmaker | Read Full Review »
• [+] Entertainment Weekly
  
  67
  There's something almost endearingly out of sync about the sleek but now dated Euro-thriller The International.

  by Lisa Schwarzbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] Christian Science Monitor
  
  67
  What it's mainly about is movie stars skittering from locale to locale while bullets whiz by and the plot thickens - or, more to the point, curdles.

  by Peter Rainer | Read Full Review »
• [+] ReelViews
  
  63
  The International possesses the look and feel of a thriller, but not the heart or soul of one.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] Baltimore Sun
  
  63
  Overall, though, the movie lacks the dash, wit, authority and character to become a first-class thinking-man's thriller.

  by Michael Sragow | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  63
  While its globe-trotting itinerary recalls the mad whirl of a "Bourne" picture, nothing about this film's style resembles the second or third "Bourne" outings (which I loved).

  by Michael Phillips | Read Full Review »
• [+] Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  63
  Where "Run Lola Run" was like a perpetual-motion machine, The International seems to forever be stopping in its own tracks. Tykwer takes coffee breaks to explain the convoluted and dicey plot.

  by Steven Rea | Read Full Review »
• [+] Miami Herald
  
  63
  An hour after seeing it, you may not remember what The International was about. But you'll certainly remember that shootout. That is something to behold.

  by Rene Rodriguez | Read Full Review »