Working on the theory that Clive Owen can never really be bad in anything, I ignored the lukewarm reviews and went to see The International anyway. It turned out to be a sub-Bourne conspiracy thriller whose titular villainous organization is, in happy concurrence with the headlines, a bank. But the movie has a major saving grace: at its core is a truly spectacular shootout at the Guggenheim Museum.
I am something of a connoisseur of shootouts. The rest of the time I'm a peaceful type who has rarely been near a gun (although I did fire a .303 rifle during a short-lived stint as an Air Cadet at school). But cinematic shootouts are cartoons for adults. They are cathartic and pulse-quickening: visual caffeine.
The natural home of the shootout is, of course, the western. The entire point of most westerns is the climactic shootout: the title Gunfight At the OK Corral tells you all you need to know. The script of a western chips away at your morality until, when it's time for the big finish, you can't wait for the villains to end their days in a hail of lead. My favourite remains Rio Bravo (1959), with John Wayne as the sheriff and a magnificent Dean Martin as an alcoholic gunfighter. Barely able to hold his whisky glass for most of the movie, Dino sobers up at the end for some fun with guns.
War movies are another obvious source of material - but something about the uniforms and the predictability of it all leaves me numb. One notable exception is Where Eagles Dare (1968), in which Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton mount a daring raid on a Gothic mountain fortress. The presence of Clint and Burton (who had appeared in The Spy Who Came in From The Cold) give away this film's secret: it's not a war movie at all, but a blend of western and spy thriller.
Generally, straightforward thrillers rely more on chases than fusillades. What I'm looking for is not a sporadic exchange of gunfire, but a scene in which the hero survives the destruction of an entire building. Die Hard (1988), for example, gets it right: Bruce Willis smashing through a window on the end of a rope while firing an Uzi as a helicopter explodes overhead is altogether my cup of tea.
The 1990s was something of a vintage era for shootouts. In Luc Besson's Léon (1994), you get not only Jean Reno and a Lolita-esque Natalie Portman, but a crazed Gary Oldman and a band of killers who clearly answered a job ad requiring "cannon fodder". The final battle pits Reno against an entire SWAT team. Creative destruction ensues, with red laser sights crisscrossing in the gunsmoke like an off-kilter Mondrian.
And the very next year brought us Heat, with DeNiro, Pacino and a deafening downtown face-off between LA police and a gang of thieves for whom the expression "heavily armed" could have been coined.
Talking of Face-Off (1997), the arrival of director John Woo on the scene began a new trend of balletic gunfights. These were inevitably filmed in slow-motion and often featured pouring rain, flapping doves, the petals of shredded flowers and ideally a combination of all of three. The style culminated in The Matrix (1999), in which Keanu Reeves, responding to an inquiry from his dispatcher, requests: "Guns - lots of guns."
After the grand guignol of Woo and the frères Wachowski, the action genre has reverted to a more realist vein. I must say, this is more to my taste. After all, what made the shootout in Heat so exciting was that it was a moment of breathtaking violence at the centre of an otherwise measured movie. The International plays it the same way. In the midst of this chilly, rather talky film, the Guggenheim scene is brutally unexpected. The script, like Owen, barely makes it out of the building alive.
But what a way to go.
I love "the international". i reckon julia was great , really love her. from the days of "pretty woman". my daughter is has a crush on her
Posted by: entertainment news | November 19, 2009 at 04:34 PM