Wednesday, April 28, 2010

'International' gunfight one of the best ever

I watched the “The International” for the first time ever a couple of days ago and found the movie remarkable for a number of reasons.
The movie, which was released in February 2009, tells the story of Interpol agent Louis Salinger (played by Clive Owen) and New York Assistant DA Eleanor Whitman (played by Naomi Watts) as they try to bring to justice one of the world’s most powerful banks, the International Bank of Business and Credit, which, in almost super-villain form, goes out of its way to fund terrorist activities and have a bad influence on international affairs.
This movie is a decent thriller, and I found it very similar to the Bourne Supremacy movies that have been popular in recent years.
The thing that I found most remarkable about this movie was the gunfight sequence that takes place about three-fourths of the way through the movie. To me, the best movie gunfight ever was in 1995’s “Heat,” which starred Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer. The gunfight in “The International” is a close second.
“The International” gunfight takes place in the Guggenheim Museum, located off of Fifth Avenue in New York, and involves Salinger, a highly-skilled assassin and a team of IBBC hired guns that have been sent to take them both out.
The ensuing gunfight left the museum pockmarked with hundreds of bullet holes and sent the enormous hanging light fixture/sculpture hanging in the center of the building crashing to the lobby floor (taking out a couple of bad guys in the process). According to Wikipedia, a life-size replica of the museum was built for the shootout scene in “The International.” (I wonder how much that cost.)
While the gunfight was pretty awesome, it went on for what seemed like a very long time and a couple of things made it seem a little unrealistic. First, in true movie fashion, no one seemed to run out of bullets or to have access to a loaded handgun that happened to be lying at their feet. Second, the museum’s security staff, which you see prior to the start of the gunfight, must have went to hide in a closet once the shooting started because they make no appearance during the gunfight. Third, the local police only show up after the gunfight’s over, which is weird, given the location of the museum.
In the end, it was a good movie, and it gets a solid A in my book. Have any of you out there in the reading audience seen this movie? If so, what did you think about it?

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