Fridae

Is recession biting into your traveling dollars and putting a crimp in your plans to vacation in Europe? Then how about watching a mediocre thriller that takes you everywhere around Europe, from Berlin to Milan to Istanbul.

Clive Owen and Naomi Watts play an Interpol agent and a district attorney respectively who are investigating the activities of a bank called the International Bank of Business and Credit - or the International, for short. It seems that the bank has been up to no good, a scenario that is not hard to conceive in these times.

But instead of sparking a credit crisis as the American banks did, the International is guilty of worse: Dealing in shady arms sales so as to gradually gain control of Third World debt. As someone in the movie astutely puts it, "If you control the debt, you control everything."

Gallivanting all over Europe in pursuit of justice, Clive Owen and Naomi Watts get into all sorts of nasty scrapes and shootouts, including one spectacular gunfight that takes place at New York's Guggenheim Museum, or at least a replica of it.

Despite the scenic locations and the glamorous stars, The International is a contrived and unconvincing thriller. It aspires to James Bond or a Jason Bourne status, but falls way off the mark. The script has some pretty silly lines (for instance, "Sometimes the best way to find your destiny is on the path to avoiding it") while the plot is simply unbelievable.

Is there anything true or honest in The International? Yes, one: Banks are evil.