Metacritic reviews

Clive Owen makes a semi-believable hero, not performing too many feats that are physically unlikely. As the plucky DA, Naomi Watts wisely plays up her character's legal smarts and plays down the inevitable possibility that the two of them will fall in love.

I can promise you a fairly good thriller with mixed-bag elements: preposterous plot, smartly elegant direction, one of the worst recent performances by a major actress, and a dynamite stick of an action scene that can stand close to the greats (the car chase in "The French Connection," the single-take battle sequence in "Children of Men") and from which the movie never really recovers.

There's something almost endearingly out of sync about the sleek but now dated Euro-thriller The International.

While its globe-trotting itinerary recalls the mad whirl of a "Bourne" picture, nothing about this film's style resembles the second or third "Bourne" outings (which I loved).

Where "Run Lola Run" was like a perpetual-motion machine, The International seems to forever be stopping in its own tracks. Tykwer takes coffee breaks to explain the convoluted and dicey plot.

An hour after seeing it, you may not remember what The International was about. But you'll certainly remember that shootout. That is something to behold.

Ultimately feel so empty and forgettable.

I couldn't help feeling that The International was stuck in second gear, like it couldn't decide whether to be fun or meaningful and so settled for being neither.

An action thriller with some decent action and a few thrills, but all embedded in a yarn so hopelessly tangled that even the loose threads have knots.

Both actors (Owens and Watts) seem mildly aggrieved (and not at all convincing) at having to play characters considerably less intelligent than themselves in a movie that plays even dumber.