Category: Conspiracy thriller

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Kirk has to overcome a lifelong prejudice against Klingons in the marvellous, best-in-series film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Cast: William Shatner (Captain James T Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Captain Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy), James Doohan (Scotty), Walter Koenig (Commander Pavel Chekov), Nichelle Nichols (Commander Uhuru), George Takei (Captain Hikaru Sulu), Christopher Plummer (General Chang), Mark Lenard (Ambassador Sarek), David Warner (Chancellor Gorkon), Kim Cattrell (Lt Valeris), Rosana DeSoto (Azetbur), Kurtwood Smith (Federation President), Brock Peters (Admiral Cartwright), Michael Dorn (Colonel Worf), John Shuck (Klingon Ambassador), Iman (Martia)

This will sound ridiculous, but there are few films that have had such an impact on me as Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. How bizarre is that? But not only can I trace my love of all things Trek to this film, but it was also my basic introduction to Shakespeare, whose plays in various shapes and forms have been a big part of my life ever since. Throw into the mix that it sparked an interest in the Cold War and you’ve got quite a coup for this sixth film in (I’ll be honest!) a hit-and-miss franchise.

This film follows the final mission of Kirk (William Shatner) and company. There has been a disaster on the Klingon moon Praxis, which has devastated the Klingon economy and left them with no choice but to enter peace negotiation with the Federation, to try and end the Cold War that has existed for generations between the two powers. Sound familiar? While Spock (Leonard Nimoy) has been one of the leading negotiators with Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner), Kirk is reluctantly roped in to provide an escort for the Klingons to a peace conference. Kirk, and many of his crew, are weighed down with decades of prejudice and suspicion of Klingons (attitudes that erupt in a tense dinner between the Enterprisecrew and many of the equally suspicious Klingons). Kirk and McCoy (DeForest Kelley) however find themselves in trouble when Gorkon is assassinated and the two men are arrested and put on trial by the Klingons. Will Spock save them? Can they save the peace talks? Time for one last adventure.

Star Trek VI very nearly didn’t happen. The previous film, written and directed by Shatner, was a disaster, a messy, strange, flat-footed, cheap-looking adventure that was a huge flop, won several Razzies and nearly killed the series off. So it’s great that the cast got a chance to have one final swan-song in their parts – and that this basically turned into the most intelligent film they had made since Star Trek II. No surprise that Nicholas Meyer, an articulate, literate and intelligent novelist turned film-maker, was the common link between them. Not weighed down by Star Trek lore, nor the breezy “I’m above this” contempt that other directors in the series have had, Meyer understands what makes good Trek – a strong story, compelling character arcs, intelligent writing and a good balance between adventure and themes that resound with contemporary depth.

Star Trek VI was written as the Berlin Wall fell, and it’s a neat commentary on the sort of attitudes you would have seen in America and Russia at the time. Gorkon’s name even echoed Gorbachev (and Lincoln as well). But this isn’t just a historical parallel with the modern world. Instead Meyer also uses this to explore the attitudes of his characters. Like Star Trek II, this works into a neat deconstruction of Kirk’s persona. Kirk has to confront not age here (as in that film) but instead his own out-of-step anger, prejudices and refusal to change. At the same time, the film also explores Kirk as a man who can overcome his instinctive hostility, to make himself a better man. It’s such rich complexity that it’s no wonder I got sucked into a life-long love for Star Trek.

All this makes a fabulous framework for the strongest, most high-stakes entry in the franchise. Meyer’s direction is spot on: simmering with tension in the first half, investing every scene with a creeping intensity and rumbling sense of disagreement. He also works brilliantly with the regular cast, who turn in some of their best performances in this film: Shatner in particular reins in (mostly) the ham for a thoughtful and intelligence performance, while Kelley mixes deadpan snarks with a world-weary resignation. Nimoy also goes further than he has for a long time with Spock, who struggles under the surface with a host of emotions, from hope, pride, guilt and fury all bubbling away under that cool Vulcan façade. The rest of the cast also get moments to shine. 

This is a film that barely puts a foot wrong in its entire first act. From the opening explosion of Praxis – with a hugely exciting sense of danger as Sulu’s Excelsior starship gets caught up in the shockwave – through to the trial of Kirk and Bones, this film is tonally spot on. We understand completely the hostility and distrust Kirk feels towards the Klingons, just as we appreciate on a deeper level his desire to make the peace talks work. The awkward encounters with the Klingons simmer with an unspoken racism from the Federation characters (many of the cast reported being uncomfortable with the imperialist and superior tone their characters had to take), and a hostile resentment from the Klingons. The eventual assassination attempt has a grim inevitability about it, but is expertly shot and edited (a zero-gravity assault by two assassins on Gorkon’s disabled ship). The show-trial itself is like a nightmare of injustice. It’s scintillating and compelling stuff.

While the pace does slacken slightly when Kirk and McCoy find themselves in a Klingon prison camp – we are, by the way, introduced to the prison camp via a speech from the commandant eerily reminiscent of the greetings handed out in Bridge on the River Kwai – it never loses the audience’s attention. And it powers back up for a brilliant all-action, at first totally one-sided, fight between the Enterprise and a Klingon ship en route to the peace conference. A large measure of the film’s atmospheric success should also be given to the extraordinary score by Cliff Eidelman, a brilliant combination of familiar themes and fast-paced orchestral work, one of my favourite film scores.

And Shakespeare? Where does he come into it? Largely through Christopher Plummer, playing General Chang, the man who emerges as principal antagonist. Plummer’s exuberant performance is perfect for this larger-than-life warrior – a man who loves nothing more than reading Shakespeare “in the original Klingon” (one of many examples of the film’s wit). Plummer lets rip throughout the film, quoting endlessly from virtually every Shakespeare play you could imagine, just this side of ham. Plummer is also, for my money, the best villain this series had. But how could you not love a film where the villain rotates round in his command chair shrieking gleefully “Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war!” Or says farewell to Kirk early on with a cheeky “we have heard the chimes at midnight…”. It’s possibly the best introduction to how great Shakespeare is that you can have.

But then that’s just part of Meyer’s witty, literate script, which throws in quotes from Conan Doyle and JM Barrie to Adlai Stevenson and Neville Chamberlain, and has Spock tells Kirk he’s the perfect choice for a mission to the Klingons as “there is an old Vulcan saying: only Nixon can go to China”. With stuff like that how can you not enjoy the film? It also understands the warmth between the main cast, their sense of character. The whole film combines an elegiac tone with a triumphant final mission, the passing of an era – with the final moments of the film capturing this, from its Peter Pan quote (“First star to the left and straight on until morning”), to the signatures of the cast appearing on the screen, literally signing off on their Star Trek careers.

The whole film is perfectly pitched like this. Every moment works from the off, and the action and adventure is balanced by some wonderful comic moments and beats of high tension and drama. The film’s use of the Cold War in Space as a backdrop works really well, and sheds a new light on attitudes in the franchise that have never really been touched before. It’s well acted, directed with flair and skill (the final space battle is brilliantly assembled), and the score is fantastic. There is a reason why I inflicted this film on my best man and ushers the morning before my wedding: it’s got a special place in my heart and it always will.

Oblivion (2013)

Tom Cruise goes all Top Gun (Olga Kurylenko is along for the ride, pretty much all she does in the movie) in would-be intellectual sci-fi thriller Oblivion

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Tom Cruise (Jack Harper), Morgan Freeman (Malcolm Beech), Olga Kurylenko (Julia Rusakova), Andrea Riseborough (Victoria Olsen), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Sykes), Melissa Leo (Sally)

Spoilers: I’m going to discuss the entire content of the plot from the third paragraph. You’ve been warned!

It’s 60 years after an alien attack. The world has been destroyed, cities lie in ruins, and mankind has fled to Jupiter’s moon Titan. Earth is being drained of its last few resources to power the new civilisation on Titan by massive machines. Drones fly around the planet, protecting the machines from the last surviving alien forces still on Earth. The drones are tended by Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and Vika Wilson (Andrea Riseborough), whose memories have been wiped for security reasons and who are dedicated to keeping the drones functioning. 

Or is this all a lie?

Well it won’t be a huge surprise to hear that it is, of course. And there are some decent ideas in Kosinski’s film: the twist reveal that the organisation Harper and Wilson are working so hard to preserve is in fact the very alien invaders they so hate, or that the strange figures on the planet they are helping the drones to kill are actually the last surviving remnants of mankind. Harper and Wilson are clones of NASA astronauts captured 60 years ago and replicated over and over again in order to serve the robots. The “Tet” in space that they believe is their HQ is the alien mothership. These are all decent twists. So why do they combine together to have so little real impact?

I think it’s because Kosinski rushes the film. He’s so pleased with the narrative rug pulls that he seems to want to reveal many of them one after the other. Additionally, the biggest twist – Tom Cruise is actually working for the baddies! – immediately makes most of the rest easy to predict. Not least the constant references to Base 49 where he and Vika work – sure enough it’s a clone number, so the planet is filled with clones of this pair. The only thing stopping them bumping into each other is that they have been told everything outside of their “patrol zone” is irradiated and they must never enter it. 

All of this world building – and the film does take its time establishing it a piece at a time early on – is interesting stuff. But it loses its way once the film surrenders itself to a string of reveals that overwhelm it. By the time we are watching super-man Jack shooting down drones from his helicopter, the film seems to have lost the more meditative start. With Jack at first we get a sense of a guy longing to find more depth to live with. But the film loses this sense, with Jack become steadily less interesting the more we find out about him.

Then once you accept the idea of Cruise and Riseborough being endlessly cloned, the logic gap starts to click into place. It’s never explained why the aliens are so reliant on human engineers for their drones – if they have conquered loads of planets before without them, why do they need them here? Furthermore, we are told the first wave of Jacks were mindless soldiers who killed everyone on the planet – why then are these engineer Jacks and Vikas given so much independent thought? Why not just make them automatons? Why clone them and then lie to them about who they are working for – why not just program them to obey the robots?

Then after a slow build of questions and revelations about Jack’s world, we get a standard Independence Day style mission up into space to “blow up the mother ship”. Of course this is a mission that only your man Tom can do. And do it he does, because Tom Gotta Do What Tom Gotta Do. It’s all a rather disappointing resolution to a film that toys around with being something a bit more complex and interesting earlier on.

Ah, Tom Cruise. To be honest he’s probably miscast here. There is something so incredibly, movie-star strong about Cruise that he somehow overpowers the shocks and make them seem silly. On top of which, the part is another ego-stroke. Jack is the ultimate man’s man – he fixes things, he loves sports, he builds a cabin in the woods, he’s clearly dynamite in the sack; but he’s also sensitive and caring and in touch with his feelings. On top of which both female characters in the film – Riseborough’s sadly besotted Vika and Kurylenko’s mysterious astronaut who lands on Earth and awakens strange memories in Jack – are both pathetic ciphers who need Tom’s help for everything, while of course also being way, way, way too young for the Cruiser.

But the film still looks good, and still has some very interesting twists. The design and visuals are faultless – in fact they seem to become the main focus, all those long shots of deserted, sand consumed parts of New York. Its main problem is that it’s low on themes – I guess it’s trying to make a case that humanity can’t be bashed out of us, no matter how many times we try and clone it out of someone – but it gets lost a bit in plot mechanics and the delight the director has in executing them. For a film that only really has four characters in it, I still felt they were hazy and undefined. A lot is left to the viewer’s own suppositions, so the film gets pretty reliant on your adding the depth it needs. If you are inclined to do so, this works. But the essential dramatic thrust of the film itself isn’t compelling enough to make you willing to make the effort the film needs.

Oblivion wants to be the next big, thoughtful, twist-filled, sci-fi epic. But it just doesn’t have enough interest and complexity to really engage the viewer. Instead it all becomes a bit forgettable – not because it’s bad but because, at the end of the day, it’s nothing special.

All the Money in the World (2017)

Christopher Plummer dominates (at short notice!) Ridley Scott’s pedestrian true-life kidnap thriller All the Money in the World

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Michelle Williams (Gail Harris), Christopher Plummer (J. Paul Getty), Mark Wahlberg (Fletcher Chace), Romain Duris (Cinquanta), Timothy Hutton (Oswald Hinge), Charlie Plummer (John Paul Getty III), Andrew Buchan (John Paul Getty II), Marco Leonardi (Mammoliti)

In 2017 something quite extraordinary happened. A string of unpleasant allegations emerged about Kevin Spacey, turning him overnight from the toast of Hollywood into a pariah. Not good news for Ridley Scott’s Getty kidnap drama All the Money in the World, which was only a month away from opening – and had Kevin Spacey in a central, Oscar-bait role as J. Paul Getty. The film looked like box office poison – until Scott decided to reshoot large chunks of the film four weeks before opening, with Christopher Plummer taking over the role of Getty. And of course they would still make the release date.

John Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer) is an oil tycoon, and the richest man in history, worth at least a billion dollars (the film opens with a dry history lesson showing how Getty gained a monopoly for selling Saudi oil for the Saudis, thus becoming richer then Croesus and Midas rolled into one). Scott’s drama follows the kidnapping of Getty’s grandson John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer – no relation) in Rome in 1973. The kidnappers want $17 million dollars. The famously frugal Getty’s response is that he’s got 13 other grandchildren and won’t run the risk of seeing them all being kidnapped for cash, so he won’t pay a dime. This leaves the kidnapped boy’s mother Gail Harris (Michelle Williams) in despair – after a divorce from Getty’s son, she agreed to not take a penny and can’t pay the ransom. Getty does send his fixer Fletcher Chace (Mark Wahlberg) to work with the police and negotiate – but basically Gail hasn’t a hope unless Getty relents.

Spot the difference: Spacey (left) heavily made up and Plummer

It’s astonishing Scott managed to completely recast, re-shoot and re-edit the second most important part in the film at such short notice – and apparently in eight days. It’s also brilliant that this gives us another vintage Christopher Plummer performance. With cold firmness, gimlet-eyed focus, and a dark twinkly charm which switches in a moment to disengaged indifference, Plummer is so perfectly cast as Getty you wonder why they didn’t get him in the first place. Plummer set a record as the oldest Academy Award nominee for his work on this film – and surely also set some sort of record in being nominated for an Oscar less than two months after he signed on to make the film!

We should be glad that Plummer got this great role – particularly as, to be honest, his performance and the story of how it came about is literally the only reason to remember this film. If it lasts at all it will solely be because of such chutzpah at defying the odds – as a film, this is a dud almost from start to finish.

Long, turgid, dull, lacking in any emotional or human interest, no sense of drama – rarely has a kidnap victim been so boring, or his fate carried so little tension – shot with a lazy blue filter that seems to say “it’s the 1970s, everything was a bit faded”, this turns a compelling story into a viewing chore. How can this happen? How can such an interesting story be made so bloody flat?

A film like this should either be a pressure-cooker, against-the-clock drama or a Faustian journey into the darkness of a man (Getty) who sold his soul for riches, or a sort of dark comedy wherein a billionaire refuses to pay out comparative peanuts. What it becomes is none of those things. It relishes Getty’s greed, but never really gets under the skin of what makes him like this. It gets bogged down in the mechanics of kidnapping but never makes them interesting. It enjoys (and most of this is down to Plummer) Getty’s indifference and selfishness, but doesn’t have the guts to go for black comedy. It’s a nothing film.

Part of it is the film’s odd opening structure. Much of the first 30 minutes is a confusing series of flashbacks and flashforwards, establishing multiple events – Getty’s fortune rising from the 1930s, the story of young Getty’s parents’ divorce in the 60s, the kidnapping of young Getty in 1973 – all are cut together with such a lack of regard for narrative drive that it’s both difficult to follow what is happening and when, and also hard to engage with anyone involved in the story. From there, when we reach a conventional timeline, events feel like they are being ticked off rather than being fashioned into a compelling and tense drama. It’s all just flat and lifeless.

It should be a film where Michelle Williams’ Gail comes to the fore, and we feel her pain, fear and frustration at being unable to save her son. Instead she is competing with so many alternative viewpoints that her story gets truncated down into the sort of performance we admire as being basically good, but develop no real empathy for. It’s a real shame, but she’s a victim of this being such a dry and lifeless film. 

It’s not helped that she also has to share screen time with Wahlberg. The two actors have virtually no chemistry whatsoever, and Wahlberg is way out of his depth here, totally unable to bring anything to the part other than his earthy chippiness. Chase is a dull character who ends up feeling increasingly irrelevant – eventually an invented scene showing him threatening Getty to stump up the cash is thrown in, you feel to give Wahlberg a “moment” rather than because it grows out of a sense that Chase has grown closer to Gail and her family.

But then that’s the whole film – it feels perfunctory and routine where it should be compelling. Rather than building a terrifying momentum as the kidnapping becomes more and dangerous for the young Getty, the tension seems to leak out of the edges. By the end you barely care about anyone involved in it. It really says something that, with only a week’s notice or so, Plummer blows most of the rest of the cast out of the water with his performance. He and his casting are the only reason to ever remember this turgid disappointment.

Seconds (1966)

Trauma abounds in dull, self-important conspiracy thriller Seconds

Director: John Frankenheimer

Cast: Rock Hudson (Tony Wilson), Salome Jens (Nora Marcus), John Randolph (Arthur Hamilton), Will Geer (Old Man), Jeff Corey (Mr Ruby), Richard Anderson (Dr Innes), Murray Hamilton (Charlie Evans), Karl Swenson (Dr Morris), Khigh Dhiegh (Davalo), Frances Reid (Emily Hamilton), Wesley Addy (John)

In the 1960s, John Frankenheimer directed a string of conspiracy and paranoia thrillers, the most famous of which was The Manchurian Candidate. Seconds follows on in that genre, but where The Manchurian Candidate is first-and-foremost an adventure story with a deeper soul, Seconds is a self-important piece of overt arty cinema that quickly outstays its welcome.

This is particularly annoying as, on paper, this is a great story. A business makes its living from selling new, younger bodies (and new carefree lives), known as “seconds”, to old, rich people so they can start afresh. One such man is depressed banker Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), who is reborn as artist Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson). The one rule? They can’t tell anyone about the procedure or about their old lives, and must leave everything behind. Needless to say, the prospect of a new life is a hell of a lot better than actually getting it.

Seconds really should go from there into a fascinating exploration of truth and identity: instead it swiftly gets bogged down in arty camera shots, self-important philosophising about the nature of identity, and tediously over-extended sequences of Hamilton/Wilson trying (and failing) to come to terms with his new life. The entire film never shakes the feeling that it believes it is stunningly important and everything it does is making crucially important, profound points, and it quickly loses the audience. 

The basic problem with it, above all others, is that we are given no reason at all to care about Hamilton/Wilson in either of his two personae. John Randolph is so effectively beige as the original Hamilton, you genuinely end up not caring what happens to him. Nothing in either his life or personality sparks any interest, or any sense of loss. Pile onto that the fact that it seems to take an age for him to commit to having the operation in the first place and you have a rather slow, dragging half-hour opening with a character you care very little about. And that’s just the first act.

The point the film wants to make is that changing your face and your life cannot always change the man inside: that the basic unhappy discontent of Hamilton/Wilson isn’t going to be fixed by giving him Rock Hudson’s face. Sad people are going to be sad whatever. The fact that I have summed up all the ideas of the film in a few short lines tells you everything. The film takes over an hour to make the same statements, with Wilson as tedious a lead as Hamilton was. In fact, one of the main problems is that the most interesting characters by far are those on the edge of the film – from Will Geer’s seemingly benign, but deeply sinister exec running the business to Wesley Addy’s scarily omniscient butler, these side characters all offer a lot more interest than our lead.

Wilson ends up in a beach community, filled with a host of suspicious-looking people and staffed by company representatives determined to make sure Wilson doesn’t disgrace himself or blow the gaff. Hudson makes a decent fist of the job – many commentators have made the rather clumsy point that the famously closeted Hudson probably had more understanding of what it was like hiding your real identity than any other Hollywood star around at the time – but it can’t change the fact that he’s basically not that strong or compelling a performer. Or that, even in the new body, Hamilton/Wilson is still a pompous and dull stick-in-the-mud.

So even in a new skin the character is not one you can feel any investment in. The community sequences are as slow and overplayed as the opening half hour. We are never really clear what exactly Wilson/Hamilton finds so terrifying and unsatisfying about the community, or why he finds the idea of other “seconds” so deeply traumatising. The sequence is also cursed with a bizarre “grape crushing” ceremony, that plays out like a sort of Woodstocky orgy. I imagine it is meant to convey the sudden appeal of free living – but it’s so skin-crawlingly awkward and embarrassing in its staging that it makes Frankenheimer feel like a stuffy dad attempting to relate to the sexy young kids. 

Seconds is basically too dry and empty the majority of the time to really care about or enjoy. Frankenheimer – and in particular his cinematographer James Wong Howe – shoot the film with an inspiring and trippy inventiveness as well as a disconcerting surreality. The woozy black-and-white photography constantly mixes unsettling angles, disconcerting zooms and intense POV framing to leave you uncomfortable and on-edge while watching the film. While this artiness and theatricality does sometimes make the film feel like it’s trying too hard (and makes it feel very of its time) it does at least offer most (if not all) of the interest in the film.

Maybe part of the problem as well is that Seconds is an almost unbearably depressing film, with possibly the most horrifyingly grim ending you can imagine, shot with intense horror by Frankenheimer (I’ll also say that Hudson’s desperation and fear as he realises the final fate the company has in mind for him is brilliant). It’s not exactly fun viewing, but it’s so intense you have to admire it even while finding it terrifying. It’s one of the few moments where the film’s pretensions, and pride in itself, really pay off with the final product. 

It’s the problem all over with Seconds. There are moments in there you can admire – and you can totally see why it has been reclaimed by many now as a lost classic. However, it’s also really easy to understand why the film was a box office bomb, unloved by the cinemagoers and why it’s not very well known today. There is so little in there for you to feel an emotional connection to – its lead character is a bore and a cold fish, his love interest sinister, and huge chunks of the story are delivered with a puffed up pride at how clever the whole thing is. It’s a huge disappointment, considering its potential.

Gorky Park (1983)

William Hurt investigates murder in Soviet Russia in ace adaptation Gorky Park

Director: Michael Apted

Cast: William Hurt (Arkady Renko), Lee Marvin (Jack Osborne), Brian Dennehy (William Kirwill), Ian Bannen (Prosecutor Iamskoy), Joanna Pacula (Irina Asanova), Michael Elphick (Pasha), Richard Griffiths (Anton), Rikki Fulton (Major Pabluda), Alexander Knox (The General), Alexei Sayle (Golodkin), Ian McDiarmid (Professor Andreev), Niall O’Brien (KGB Agent Rurik)

Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Gorky Park was a bestseller in the early 1980s. It looked at grim goings-on behind the Iron Curtain, a trio of grisly murders in Moscow’s Gorky Park (the bodies are faceless, toothless and fingerless to avoid identification). The murders are investigated by Arkady Renko (wonderfully played in this film by William Hurt), a chief investigator for the Moscow militia who feels out of place in the corruption of Soviet Russia, but is equally scornful of the consumerism of the West. The investigation delves into a complex web of Soviet relationships with American business and the dissident community, not least an American millionaire fur trader Jack Osborne (Lee Marvin), and a would-be defector and possible friend of the victims, Irina Asabova (Joanna Pacula).

What I loved about this film is the novel is a rather overwhelming 500+ pages, but this film is a brisk and pacey two hours – and I literally couldn’t think of a single thing missing. But then that’s what you get when you have a master writer adapting your screenplay. Gorky Park has Dennis Potter, perhaps the greatest British TV writer of all time – and this is a sublime script, which keeps the pace up, covers all the tense greedy wrangling of the villains, and also makes subtle and telling points about the Soviet system, all in a punchier and clearer way than the books. The dialogue is also absolutely cracking, ringing with a brusque, icy poetry, with a brilliant ear for a turn of phrase.

Filmed on location around Helsinki and Glasgow among other places, what the film misses in actual Russian locations (needless to say the Soviets were not keen to host the production of a film that showcased murder and corruption at the heart of their capital city), it makes up for with Apted’s taut direction and eye for the general crappiness of Soviet life. Everything is run down, everything is dirty, everything looks cold and unappealing, even the houses and luxury bathhouses of the party leaders look a bit middle-class and uninspiring. By the time (late in the film) that you find yourself in one of Osborne’s houses you are immediately struck by the quality of the furnishings – it’s literally a different world.

This atmosphere not only creates something a bit more unique, it also allows us to relax and enjoy the quality of Smith’s story. I found it overstretched in the book, but the film gives it an urgency and a sinister creepiness that grips your attention. Apted has a brilliant eye for the little tricks to survive living in a police state, from watching what you say, to carefully placing a pencil in a dialled telephone wheel to prevent bugs from activting. Every moment is well paced and nothing outstays its welcome. Characters are introduced with skillful brushstrokes, and the relationships feel real and lived in. With such strong dialogue, it’s also great they got such good actors to do it.

William Hurt takes on the lead, and he is perfect, affecting a rather clipped English accent (all the Russians speak with various regional or RP accents). With his unconventional looks (part boyish, part stone-like), he looks the part and he totally captures the yearning unconventionality of a character who deep down probably would be a true believer in a good society, but can’t believe in the corruption around him. Far from the stereotypical would-be dissident, Hurt makes him a man who loves his homeland, but not always the people running it. He’s exactly as you would picture Renko in the book – a guy who will go for justice with the bit between his teeth, a semi-romantic hero, no superman (he frequently is bested in combat), who is looking for something to love and believe in.

The rest of the cast are equally fine. Lee Marvin is cast against type as a suave, hyper-intelligent, manipulatively greedy businessman – although his reputation for playing heavies comes in handy when the gloves come off. Joanna Pacula mixes sultry Euro-siren with an urgent yearning for freedom. Ian Bannen is wonderfully avuncular as Renko’s supportive boss (extra points for Tinker Tailor fans that Bannen is reunited here with Alexander Knox, in a dark reflection of their Control-Prideaux working relationship from that series). Michael Elphick seizes on the part of the down-to-earth Pasha, Renko’s friend and comrade, a role greatly improved from the book (largely to give Renko someone to bounce ideas off).

Apted’s film has a great sense of tension and a wonderful feeling for Soviet Moscow’s dark underbelly. The mystery is increasingly gripping and involving as the film goes on – and, in a nice rug-pull, turns out to be about something totally different than what you might expect. Even the final shootout is assembled and shot with an unexpected vibe. It avoids any Cold War pandering – the main villain is a sadistic American allied with Russians, our hero a noble Russian who partners up with a salt-of-the-earth but decent American cop (Brian Dennehy, also very good). For a late night mystery thriller, with a touch of everything thrown in, you can do a lot worse than this. I enjoyed it far more than I expected. I’d almost call it an overlooked B-movie gem.

The China Syndrome (1979)

Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon struggle against Big Business interests in the Nuclear Industry in The China Syndrome

Director: James Bridges

Cast: Jane Fonda (Kimberly Wells), Jack Lemmon (Jack Godell), Michael Douglas (Richard Adams), Scott Brady (Herman DeYoung), Wilford Brimley (Ted Spindler), James Hampton (Bill Gibson), Peter Donat (Dan Jacovich), Richard Herd (Evan McCormack), Daniel Valdez (Hector Salas)

Do we really trust nuclear power? There is something about the dangerous possibilities of splitting the atom that alarms people even today. For all that burning coal wrecks our atmosphere, people would still rather that than live downwind of a station powered on substances that could obliterate everything within a five mile radius if something went wrong. The China Syndrome is about exactly that, an accident at nuclear power plant that could spell disaster for California.

Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) is a roving reporter for a Californian news channel, who (thanks to her sexist bosses) is constantly relegated to ludicrous puff pieces (“Today a hot air balloon landed in downtown LA!”). Sent to a nuclear power plant, she stumbles upon the real news story she has waited her whole career for when she and camera-man Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) secretly film a near catastrophic incident. Investigations try to brush the event under the carpet, but shift supervisor Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) knows corner-cutting and cost-saving is putting the whole of LA at risk – and, much against his inclination, he needs to speak out. 

The China Syndrome comes very much from that burst of 1970s conspiracy thriller films where shady big-business types are willing to throw almost anything under the bus in order to make a big bonus. It’s a film that takes a pop not only at the heartless bastards running a shoddy nuclear power plant (who couldn’t care less if the reactor is poorly welded together, so long as the money keeps rolling in) but also the hypocritical cowards running the media. The heads of the news channel kowtow swiftly to big business and are staggering in their sexism and race-to-the-bottom news coverage.

This film is as much about this brainless conformism as it is the dangers of nuclear power. The film is full of people who don’t want to rock the boat: half the people working at the plant would rather turn a blind eye to problems than pay the personal price of exposing them – even Jack Lemmon’s manager is the most reluctant whistleblower you’ll see in the movies. Fonda’s journalist may not be happy with her role as airhead eye-candy, but she will play the game in order to get ahead in the industry the role – and many of her media comrades seem almost totally lacking in any journalistic instincts. The film is bookended by inane TV coverage and advertising, a condemnation of an America that doesn’t ask questions and is sleepwalking towards catastrophe.

This catastrophe is, of course, extremely close – the power plant nearly goes into meltdown because a single dial gets stuck on a high reading, leading the control room to believe the nuclear rods are about to get flooded rather than nearly being exposed. Bridges mines a heck of a lot of tension from this crisis – told entirely from the perspective of the control room – as workers react with both stressed fear and a practised professionalism to a crisis that could become a disaster. Its part of a film where regular joes are generally professional and good at their jobs, but are let down and betrayed by the culture encouraged by the higher-ups.

Some of these themes, however, get a bit muddied in the film’s middle third, which gets bogged down way too much in nuclear theory, committee meetings, slow explanations of different types of weld, and dry lectures on the functioning of nuclear energy. While it is admirable that the film has no score, you can’t help but feel that a little music here to add some drama to Lemmon looking at x-rays or Fonda staring at diagrams could have helped pump up the tension. 

But it all gets paid off by the sudden (and surprising) shift to action and drama in the film’s final third, kickstarted by a surprisingly gripping car chase between Jack Lemmon’s quiet station manager and some shady goons hired by the company. Suddenly the film is powering through a tense series of set pieces that both feel like a different movie, while still a natural progression of the stakes.

Bridges directs the film very well. Each scene is calmly and coolly assembled, and he has a great eye and ear for technology and the noises and motions of machinery, which dominate the film – even if the film is rather in love with these background sounds, which risk taking over the soundtrack. It’s all part of stressing the cold mechanicalism and lack of humanity throughout both these industries. Sometimes the foot comes off the gas a little too much – you could probably trim at least 15 minutes – but when it comes to the moments of tension he directs with sharp snappiness.

The acting is also sublime. Jane Fonda is extremely good as Kimberly Wells. Initially she seems as light and superficial as the stories she is forced to cover, but Fonda paints a clever picture of a woman squeezed into playing a role, but yearning for (and capable of) so much more, who when she finds her moment shows levels of determination and cunning you would never have expected. For all her desire to become a ‘proper’ journalist though, Wells is savvy enough to make sure she is being filmed from her good side… Fonda makes her a careerist who uncovers a sense of moral purpose. She also manages to bring real emotion to the role, making Kimberly Wells a character we swiftly connect with.

The movie however is stolen away by Jack Lemmon, brilliantly low-key and everyday as the shift manager who becomes an overwhelmingly reluctant whistleblower. Lemmon’s performance is a perfect study in smallness, of a quiet dignity. He’s got no desire to rock the boat, quietly stating that the “plant is his whole life” – but when stirred, his professional pride transforms into determination to do the right thing, even while his lack of magnetism makes him unpersuasive and hard to take seriously. It’s a terrific performance of low-key tragedy, with Lemmon building the tension with small flashes of resentment, fear, determination and disillusionment flashing across his face. It’s a great reminder of what a marvellous dramatic actor Lemmon was.

Expertly produced by Michael Douglas (who does sterling work in the third-banana role as the camera man overflowing with conviction), The China Syndrome may at times be dry, but it makes up for that with its moments of high drama and moral conviction. By and large it avoids hectoring and lecturing the audience (when not teaching us about nuclear power), and lets its points be soft-sold rather than banged home. With some terrific performances, it’s a film that still feels relevant today, and is a great example of the 1970s conspiracy thriller genre.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Robert Redford goes on the run in conspiracy thriller Three Days of the Condor

Director: Sydney Pollack

Cast: Robert Redford (Joseph Turner), Faye Dunaway (Kathy Hale), Cliff Robertson (Director Higgins), Max von Sydow (Joubert), John Houseman (Wabash), Addison Powell (Leonard Atwood), Walter McGinn (Sam Barber), Tina Chen (Janice), Michael Kane (SW Wicks), Don McHenry (Dr Lappe)

Three Days of the Condor never leaves you in any doubt that the real villains are those in power – and the possibility of escaping the reach of organisations like the CIA is beyond all of us. Condor is damn well-made though – Pollack’s direction is nearly faultless in its taut claustrophobia – even if the film itself gets a bit lost in its confusing obliqueness.

Joseph Turner (Robert Redford) is a quiet, boyish, Robert-Redfordish academic whose job is to read books published all over the world and report back to the CIA any familiarities with any secret operations past or present, or any good ideas from operations. One day, while out fetching lunch for his colleagues, he returns to find they have all been murdered by a hit-team led by a shadowy foreigner (Max von Sydow). Calling in the CIA, he finds he can’t trust anyone – and is forced to hide out by kidnapping a woman, Kathy Hale (Faye Dunaway), whom he bumps into in a shop.

Three Days of the Condor opens with an electric pace. The build-up to the assassination of Turner’s co-workers is extremely tense, while the immediate after effects – and Turner’s lost, confused terror – is brilliantly involving. The stream of conspiracy-laced events, and the unsettling lack of security about who to trust creates a terrific mood of paranoia. Pollack’s editing is tight, and the photography keeps the action naturalistic and eerily involving. It creates an unsettling drama where no one can be trusted. 

It taps perfectly into that 1970s vibe of the state being omniscient and inhumane – Turner’s CIA contact will only talk to him using his code name, shows no human interest in his deceased comrades and only asks if Condor himself is “damaged”. Later Turner chippily asks why a senior agent is addressed by his name, while he is only called Condor. 

Redford is very good as Turner – perfectly convincing as the bookish man thrust into circumstances where he is out of his depth, but whose innate abilities to think fast and adapt allow him to believably keep one step ahead of those pursuing him. The film has a love for the grimy Le Carre-ish detail of espionage, which it mixes well with its James Bondish elements of hitmen, violence and sex. The script has good lines, and several excellent set-pieces that trade in that queasy feeling of being out-of-depth.

The momentum of the first half however eventually gets bogged down in the “working out” of the conspiracy. This is a bit hampered by the early acts of the movie being focused more on atmosphere than on plot build-up. With the exact purpose and function of Redford’s CIA role only really being loosely explained quite late on – and the various inter-relationships of the assorted CIA bigwigs we see also not really being that clear – the final reveal of the wrong uns is murky and doesn’t quite justify the build-up. 

Part of this is the film’s 1970s vibe – its sense that the resolution is, in a way, less important than the downer atmosphere and conspiracy tension – but it’s also a bit of a narrative flaw. It’s hard to invest in a story that never really gets put together or explained properly, and doesn’t really give us a sense of the major stakes at play or the reasons why various characters do what they do. 

Other factors also have dated the film, principally the relationship of Faye Dunaway’s Kathy and Redford’s Turner. Now there is an odd Stockholm syndrome relationship if ever I saw one. From Kathy tearfully fearing rape and assault for most of the first ten minutes of their screen time together – and with no reason to believe the story Turner is peddling – sure enough within a few hours of knowing each other this pair end up in bed together. The film attempts to suggest Turner’s ability to understand her personality (in a way no-one else ever has naturally) through her photographs brings them together –but nevertheless it’s basically a hostage falling into bed with her kidnapper, about 20 seconds after she stopped crying, after he has just released her from being tied up and gagged in her own bathroom. 

I guess it helps when your kidnapper looks like Robert Redford – and the film uses Redford’s innate trustability well – but it’s a little unsettling. Kathy swiftly becomes Turner’s little helper – but you never really get a sense that the she is an actual character, or that the film even really needs her that much. Dunaway is a good actress and plays the part very well – but there is an unsettling submissiveness and even exploitation to her character that dates the movie (not that we have moved past films where female character’s principal role is to have sex with the hero to ease his pain). The best you can say for this character is that she has “pluck”.

It’s dumping Turner down into Kathy’s home where the momentum leaks out of the film slightly. It’s a film that feels like it’s going to be set-up as a chase movie with a spy tinge, but it never really turns into that. On top of which, it takes time away from properly developing Turner’s enemies. His possible CIA opponents, led by Cliff Robertson and John Houseman, don’t really come into focus as characters. The performer who does stand out – largely because of the wry world-weariness he brings to the role – is Max von Sydow as the hitman Joubert, a character I’d happily see more of (where was his spin off?). 

Three Days of the Condor is a well-made triumph of atmosphere – but the later sections of the film don’t quite live up to the build-up, and the film doesn’t quite snap together as much as you would like in the second half. It gets lost in its labyrinthine schemes and then doesn’t have a resolution that seems interesting enough to make satisfying narrative sense.  It’s got some great moments in it, but it’s a flawed film.

Marathon Man (1976)

“Is it safe?”: Laurence Olivier interrogates Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man

Director: John Schlesinger

Cast: Dustin Hoffman (Thomas “Babe” Levy), Laurence Olivier (Dr Christian Szell), Roy Scheider (Henry “Doc” Levy), William Devane (Peter Janeway), Marthe Keller (Elsa Opel), Richard Bright (Karl), Marc Lawrence (Erhadt), Fritz Weaver (Professor Biesenthal)

The 1970s were the era of the conspiracy thriller. These were deliberately enigmatic, almost opaque, mysteries in which a humble individual was thrown up against sinister forces, backed by equally shady governments. Marathon Man is a stylish (if rather impenetrable) mystery that offers some gripping moments but gets bogged down a little too much in pleasure at its edginess, darkness and professional assurance.

Thomas “Babe” Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a post-graduate student working on a re-evaluation of the McCarthy era, partly aimed at clearing his father’s name (who committed suicide while under investigation). Babe’s brother Henry “Doc” (Roy Scheider) works for a shady government organisation, and has recently narrowly avoided assassination twice in France. Doc suspects the killers were sent by renegade-Nazi Dr Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier). Szell’s New York-based brother was recently killed in a car crash, and with his death Szell has lost vital access to his cash reserve of diamonds in a New York bank, which he needs to maintain his safety in Uruguay.

I hadn’t seen Marathon Man for several years, and I was struck by how long it takes to get going: it takes a solid 45 minutes to get to the point. Huge swathes of the opening act of the film is all about getting the set-up and atmosphere, rather than establishing the story. It also seems to be about setting up as complex as possible a context for a film that boils down to a pretty straightforward plot. Nearly all the action that Doc gets up to in Europe is pretty much impossible to work out and never seems to tie in with the rest of the plot once it starts (exciting as it is to watch him dodge assassination attempts). Even the marathon running of the hero, and his relationship with Marthe Keller’s mysterious swiss woman doesn’t in the end really tie in that closely with the story.

But then that’s often the way with Marathon Man. It’s a film in love with atmosphere, its Hitchcockian tricks and its brooding creepiness more than with logic, story or even (really) character. It’s pretty hard to work out what’s going on, and the muttered plot revelations and Schlesinger’s grimy, often deliberately obscure, filming style doesn’t always help the humble viewer work things out. It wants to be like other 70s thrillers and juggle huge events – but it’s actually a rather small-scale, humble film telling a deliberately dreary story, scored with a very 70s combination of electronic noises and plonking piano notes. Plot wise it never really explains what is it about, and gets so bogged down in cross and double cross that it eventually loses its own way.

Where the film does succeed is its individual scenes. Mention Marathon Man and anyone who has heard of it will immediately say “the dental torture film?” They might even say “Is it safe?”. Marathon Man’s dramatic centre-piece is this unnervingly taut torture scene (not too graphic it has to be said – gosh violence in films has moved on since 1976!) where Szell questions Babe (just the one question repeated over and over again) while using his dental skills to “encourage” Babe to answer (ouch!). Ever been even slightly squeamish about going for a dental check-up? This probably isn’t the film for you (heck even one of Szell’s murderous henchmen can’t watch). 

Schlesinger shoots this scenes extremely well, with the camera lingering effectively on everyday dental tools that become dreaded torture devices. Schlesinger builds sequences around action and violence very effectively: escape attempts by Babe are gripping and fight scenes are extremely tense, particularly Doc’s fending off of an assassin in a Paris hotel room.

That scene also highlights another effective part of Schlesinger’s direction of the film: his use of bystanders. The life and death struggle between Doc and an assassin is witnessed across the street by a wheelchair-bound old man powerless to intervene. The opening road-rage deaths of Szell’s Nazi brother and a furious New York Jew are intercut constantly with the reactions and confusions of people in New York’s streets. In the film’s finest scene, Szell has to undertake a terrifying (for him) walk through New York’s Jewish quarter to collect and value his diamonds. His paranoia and fear of being recognised mean he sweatily watches every face. When he is recognised by an old woman – who shrieks for help from bemused passers-by – you really feel Szell’s fear that this woman will turn the mass of watching New Yorkers into a lynch mob. The bystanders really add depth to the film’s paranoia – they are both dangerous and also help to isolate the characters.

The film’s main strength is Laurence Olivier’s stand-out sinister performance as the Mengele-like Szell. Terrifyingly cold, paranoid and sadistically proud, Szell is a truly great villain, and Olivier channels all his Shakespearean experience into turning him into an iconic villain. The film also really works matching Olivier’s imperious old-schoolishness with Hoffman’s edgy, brittle method (the famous anecdote from the film was Olivier’s aghast reaction to Hoffman’s decision to prepare for the torture scene by not sleeping for three days: “Dear boy, would it not be easier to just act?”).

Hoffman is actually very good in the film as a man out of his depth from the start who slowly becomes as hardened and dangerous as the people chasing him. In fact Hoffman, is so involving and empathetically frightened in this film (his desperate range of answers to “Is it safe” are really affecting) that you overlook that he is clearly far too old to be playing a college graduate. Roy Scheider is similarly good as his domineering, but loving spy brother.

But it’s Olivier’s mastery of nastiness that really makes the film lodge in your mind. Schlesinger’s film is often long-winded, opaque and confusing, but Olivier delivers a master-class in imperious nastiness. Szell is a nightmare image of the well-spoken, polite monster and Olivier’s eyes carry a spark of intense menace. Honestly I could happily watch just the scenes he is in – particularly that masterfully performed street walking scene – and be happy to stick with that. The rest of the film is often a bit of a murky mess, but when Oliver is at the centre you forget all that. Marathon Man is a conspiracy thriller so confusing I think it confuses itself – but in the individual scenes it often brilliantly captures dread, discomfort and fear.

Concussion (2015)

Will Smith takes on the NFL in solid but uninspired true-life story Concussion

Director: Peter Landesman

Cast: Will Smith (Dr Bennet Omalu), Alec Baldwin (Dr Julian Bailes), Albert Brooks (Dr Cyril Wecht), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Prema Mutiso), David Morse (Mike Webster), Arliss Howard (Dr Joseph Maroon), Mike O’Malley (Daniel Sullivan), Eddie Marsan (Dr Steven T DeKosky), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Dave Duerson), Stephen Moyer (Dr Ron Hamilton), Richard T Jones (Andre Waters), Paul Reiser (Elliot Pellman), Luke Wilson (Roger Goodell)

In 2002, Pittsburgh pathologist Dr Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) carried out an autopsy on deceased former Pittsburgh Steelers centre (and American Football legend) Mike Webster (David Morse). What he discovered – that the high speed impacts of American football massively increased the chances of players suffering serious brain damage and debilitating mental conditions – was to change his life, and lead to a six-year battle to get his research acknowledged by the NFL. This film dramatizes this story – with the obligatory inventions and dramatic changes (Landesman describes the film as “emotionally true” if not “factually true”).

Concussion is a fairly straight-forward, rather uninspired “one man’s struggle” kind of film. There isn’t much in it, to be honest, that is particularly unique or different from films of this type we’ve seen before. We’ve pretty much all seen the trope of a man pushing to get himself heard against the scorn, disbelief and anger of those who need to hear him the most. Does Concussionadd anything new to that? No not really.

Peter Landesman shoots the film with a methodical, workmanship that hits all the expected beats. The whole film plays like Michael Mann’s The Insider-lite: with the difference that the NFL never really convinces as an actual threat in the way Big Tobacco does in that film. The film falls over itself to repeatedly tell us how powerful the NFL is but never really shows us in the film how that power might work. When the FBI drum up charges against Omalu’s mentor, you never get the sense that this is being directed by the NFL themselves. They are simply never that dangerous an opponent.

Maybe because this is a film that doesn’t want to run the risk of saying America’s beloved sport is dangerous. It wants to blame bad eggs rather than an institutional failure – hence the repurposing of former player Dave Duerson as a sort of braggart bully. The characters playing the NFL heads are relegated to TV screens in the corner. It never wants to really look at the risks of this institution wilfully burying evidence their sport is dangerous, or question whether this sport is even a good idea. Throughout the world of sport, there are ungoing debates about the health risks of sport, from the danger of heart conditions to early onset dementia in football players from heading the ball. This film fails to really tap into any of this.

As such, there isn’t really any dramatic force behind the film: it doesn’t manage to suggest Omalu is in danger and it doesn’t want to turn the NFL into actual antagonists. It treads a weary middle ground. If the NFL was really positioned as a threat, then the pervasive presence of its stadium in Pittsburgh would be sinister. It isn’t for all Landesman tries to shoot it in that way.

Despite this though, Will Smith is very good as Omalu. The film’s version of the doctor seems a little different from the quirky, socially awkward real-life Omalu. But Smith nails the home-run scenes of Omalu raging at his research being disregarded. (In real life it was easy for the NFL to dismiss Omalu by using his Nigerian heritage (his ‘otherness’) quietly against him. The film doesn’t touch upon this by the way.) Smith has all the charisma the role needs and brings it a certain James-Stewartish moral decency.

The rest of the cast don’t get much else to play with. Alec Baldwin is pretty good as a former NFL doctor trying to ease his conscience (although his accent got some criticism). Gugu Mbatha-Raw has a fairly thankless role as the supportive wife, but does it well. Albert Brooks might be a bit too much at times as Cyril Wecht, but David Morse plays Mike Webster with sensitivity.

The film is not always that subtle. Shots of Webster haunting Omalu are a bit much. Omalu’s unhappiness and frustration are telegraphed using familiar clichés, from raging impotently at stony faced law officers, to trashing a room in his still-under-construction dream home in Pittsburgh (having read the source book it’s hard to believe the real Omalu ever did something like this). The timeline of the film isn’t always clear. There is a little too much lingering on funerals and tear-stained relatives for easy emotional hits.

The main issue is that Concussiondoes nothing special and doesn’t manage to make its familiar structure feel particularly fresh. It’s just a very, very familiar type of story told with no real unique imagination. Although Smith is very good, it’s not quite enough.

The International (2009)


Clive Owen and Naomi Watts are lost in the high-pressure world of big finance in The International

Director: Tom Twyker

Cast: Clive Owen (Louis Salinger), Naomi Watts (Eleanor Whitman), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Wilhelm Wexler), Ulrich Thomsen (Jonas Skarssen), Brian F. O’Byrne (The Consultant), James Rebhorn (New York DA), Michel Voletti (Viktor Haas), Patrick Baladi (Martin White), Jay Villiers (Francis Ehames), Fabrice Scott (Nicolai Yeshinski), Haluk Bilginer (Ahmet Sunay), Luca Barbareschi (Umberto Calvini), Alessandro Fabrizi (Inspector Alberto Cerutti), Felix Solix (Detective Iggy Ornelas), Jack McGee (Detective Bernie Ward), Ben Whishaw (Rene Antall), Lucian Msamati (General Motomba)

Welcome to another of my unlikely pleasures. I remember seeing The International because we took a punt on it with an Orange Wednesday 2-for-1. I had no real expectations, but I was totally wrapped up in it. It has an old-school 1970s Hollywood-conspiracy-thriller feel. I keep waiting for it to be rediscovered (I’m waiting in vain it seems). But it’s a wonderful, tense little thriller which – by focusing on the shady, morally corrupt dealings of private banks – always seems relevant. Throw in alongside that a truly stand-out action set-piece at the centre of the film and you have a much overlooked pleasure.

Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is a scruffy Interpol agent, with a reputation for getting too involved in his cases. Working with Assistant New York DA Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), Salinger is investing possible illegal arms deals involving private investment bank IBBC. After their inside contact and Whitman’s fellow DA are both murdered in quick succession, Salinger takes the battle directly to IBBC. But the bank, chaired by ruthlessly blank businessman Jonas Skarsson (Ulrich Thomsen), is prepared to go to increasingly violent lengths to protect its interests, with assassinations arranged by its in-house security expert ex-Stasi agent Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and carried out by his mysterious Consultant (Brian F. O’Byrne).

Tom Twyker shoots the film in cool grays and drained out colours, giving it a very cold palette fitting for its exploration of the ruthless viciousness of big business. Twyker uses the cold, modern architecture of the various businesses the film is set in to great effect, making a wonderful, imposing backdrop. The camera constantly allows this domineering modern architecture to fill the frame, and mixes it up with some well-chosen aerial shots that reduces the action to cogs in a machine. It’s a very distinctive visual film – and it’s not until it finishes that you realise (apart from blood) you’ve really seen a red, a green or a purple in the whole film. There’s no jittery editing or hand-held camerawork – it’s got a smooth old-school cinematic quality to it.

The plot is a chilling conspiracy thriller, that (within the confines of a Hollywood action thriller) gets really in-deep into the workings of big finance. Critics accused it of being a light-weight Jason Bourne but really it’s more of a colder Parallax View. It largely eschews action in favour of paranoia, investigation and simmering tension. It’s a well-constructed journey down the rabbit hole, as Salinger gets both closer towards answers, and further away from bringing anyone to justice. 

Clive Owen’s rumpled performance is perfect. Far from being a “Bond audition”, Salinger is an outsider, a man who lives for his job, who wears his heart on his sleeve, and spends large chunks of the film either terrified or out-of-his-depth. Practically the first thing that happens to him is being knocked out by the wing-mirror of a truck. His grubby, unshaven scruffiness doesn’t recover from that. Owen gives the performance both a moral conviction and a slight air of desperation and bewilderment, as if he can’t quite understand why others aren’t as wrapped up in his case as he is.

He’s part of a great cast of actors – the film is full of unusual choices and rewarding cameos. Armin Mueller-Stahl mastered playing these world-weary ex-spies years ago, but delivers here. Broadway star Brian F O’Byrne is great, as a ruthlessly efficient hitman. Ulrich Thomsen is rather good as the blank businessman and family man, who seems to see no moral issues in the conduct of his bank’s business. Interesting actors like Patrick Baladi, James Rebhorn, Luca Barbaeschi, Haluk Bilginer and Lucian Msamati round out the cast with terrific cameos – there is always a unique actor and dynamic performance around every corner.

The plot of the film doesn’t unfold the way you expect it to – and mixes hope with a nihilistic powerlessness. Twyker’s directing is professional and he adds a lot of intelligence to a standard Hollywood set-up. He also throws in a few moments where the film pauses to reassess things we’ve seen before or to allow Salinger to puzzle out another crucial clue.

And it’s fitting for a film so in love with overwhelming power of modernist architecture that its most explosive sequence takes place in New York’s Guggenheim museum. This is a gut-wrenchingly exciting, destructive gun battle that serves as the pivot point. Brilliantly shot and edited, and perfectly built towards, it explodes into the film and grabs your attention. Owen again is perfect for this sequence – determined, but terrified and completely out of his depth – and Twyker’s use of the Guggenheim is masterful. Honestly it’s one of the best shoot-out scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie: five minutes of brilliance. You’d remember the film for that scene alone, if for nothing else.

Okay it’s not a perfect film by any stretch. Poor Naomi Watts has a thankless, ill-formed part. I’m pleased the film doesn’t include any romantic connection between the two characters at all, but (despite her work on the case) Whitman seems more a plot device than a character. The script largely fails to serve up too many memorable lines – and its main strengths are to present familiar actions and events in a fresh manner. Some have found the plot momentum to often flag – and there is something to that – and the overall schemes of the bank are not always completely clear.

But, nevertheless, I really like The International. It’s got a classic old-school feel to it. Its views on the immorality of big business feel very true, as does its presentation of the villain as basically a monolithic institution – the actual guys running the bank seem irrelevant, it’s just the ongoing nature of business. And in this world of corporations, where destroying a few men don’t admit to a hill of beans, how can truth and justice ever win out? Even if it had nothing else, tackling that idea makes The International feel like something new and worth revisiting. Well that, and that Guggenheim gun fight…