by Michael S. Goldberger, film critic
Funny, how it works. When you’re hungry but too hurried to stop, you can’t help but pass one enticing food joint after the next. When love throws you a curve, every song intimately echoes your plight. And when it looks like the world’s evil bankers have absconded with the funds, a film like “The International” surfaces to feed our fears.
Coincidence or mysticism, there’s nothing like it to add currency to your movie-going experience. Right now the guys in charge of the big but ever-diminishing bucks have slotted in esteem two rungs beneath lawyer and barely one above used car salesman. Director Tom Tykwer’s film invites us to come boo and hiss them.
But the exercise soon changes in nature, going from analgesic release valve to yet another lesson about the average guy’s naiveté…meaning you and me. And before the action-packed cat-and-mouser is over, we sure wish we weren’t so heartily convinced of the film’s devastating pronouncements. Chalk up yet another crime against humanity.
