The International (dir. Tom Twyker)

I yearn for good spy films. Maybe it was because of my father's obsession with 007 (except for Timothy Dalton!), that I learned the rules of the genre from a young age, got so into these pictures, and even at one point wanted to apply to one of the intelligence services. The films still remain a hit with me. The spy thriller, especially one like The International, has the potential for speaking to larger concerns. Many of these films tend to deal with global politics from the European perspective (at least the English language ones like this, The Bourne Identity, and in some respects, The Constant Gardener even has elements of the genre). They also tend to star Clive Owen, who has established himself as a man's man, looks great with a gun, and has this mix of world-worn resolve, masculinity, and a sense of experienced-based intuition that makes him a great choice for these roles.


The script deals with the role of international banking organizations in the 21st century. It is one of the first works of cinema I have seen that tries to reconcile the current political situation with the one that just passed. After communism was undermined and eventually destroyed by the Western powers, there has been a loss of direction in the world. Leftists, Rightists, and even observers seem to be at a loss as to who is the enemy, or who is in charge. Even Desert Storm, the ousting of Milošević, and similar 90's conflicts seemed to have little cause or purpose in the newly "globalized" world. Society no longer had a leader. Long gone were the absolute monarchies and the evil "dictators", whether of a right or left persuasion, who seemed to imitate them. 

Even Francis Fukuyama, in a bold move, said we had reached "The End of History." And while this is obviously a stupid comment made by an intellectual in need of vitamin D, his sentiments do have some reverberation as to the sense of society having no center, because, well, it just doesn't anymore. Meaning, there is no longer, one, central institution that determines what will happen on the global scale.


The International, I feel, more importantly than it being a visually appealing and well-made piece of cinema, tries to offer up some answers to the suffering in the world. It is the sensitive people who, concerned with suffering, become political, turn to art, and tend to watch movies to gain alternative perspectives and wider understandings, and this film offers answers to the questions.

"The world is an international system of financial interdependency."

This is not a quote from the film, but the logical answer I can gather from watching it play out. Clive Owen plays Louis Salinger, an agent for Interpol, who, along with Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) is investigating the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC). The IBBC is modeled after many of the large international banks existing these days like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, who loan money to needy, developing nations. However, quickly into the film, we find out that the IBBC has shady dealings. Their executives are loaning money to countries and militias who are seeking to overthrow governments, and their activity goes completely unchallenged, mostly do to the string of bodies that have come up after any investigation into the matter has been attempted.


That is where our heroes come in. Louis is the muscle, and Eleanor, though her role is brief, is interested in finding the truth. It will be the former, the agent, who sees to it that the right people are brought to justice for immoral and illegal activity. Being the Assistant District Attorney of Manhattan, Eleanor has an interest in justice, but her character (one of the flaws of the film as she is not fully fleshed out), is first and foremost looking for scientific evidence to prove what is going on. After Umberto Calvini, a politician and anti-IBBC ideologue, is assassinated mid-speech in public, the game turns deadly, and the search for his killer, and the larger concerns of the bank, initiates.


What is most appealing about the film, again, are its political answers (or its attempts at them---who knows what the motivations are except the people pulling the strings). No one in cinema, to my knowledge, has attempted to create some understanding of global politics after the Soviet Union fell. No one has tried to find the "bad guy", but that is just the thing, because there is no bad guy. It is a large group of international bankers, CEO's, politicians, and arms dealers who have organized themselves into a system of economic control. The old distinctions, according to this film, and I think these are applicable to our world, are totally obsolete. 

It does not matter if a group or individual is black, white, Asian, communist, socialist, gay, Muslim, or any "other". The only concern today is whether or not certain countries and individuals are within this system of interdependency, and that is it. Actually, the dream of Kant, in wanting to make a "universal morality", and the theories of social contract, à La France révolutionnaire, in trying to include everyone into a political system by giving up some minor rights, at least in the sense of the universality of these ideas, has been completed. 

Whether or not a country wants to offer voting rights, women's rights, free market capitalism, social democracy, Shariah law, Marxist-Leninism, or economic protectionism is all irrelevant. It is only relevant that they buy into the system of credit that has been established and become one with the economic structure of debt, borrowing, and repayment. With the loan money, certain goals can be met, but once the money has been taken, the bank's goal is completed. 

Business is good. 

It is a system without an ideology, really, which is why it was so strange and difficult, for me initially, to understand. It does have its benefactors (all of which attend the World Economic Forum), but gone are the cultural or ideological dreams of colonialism (early capitalism's world-plan) or communism (socialism's endgame). This is the future, and also the present: the world of finance capital.

Lakeview Terrace (2008)

Lakeview Terrace (2008)

This was on Starz or one of those movie channels when I got up this morning. I had seen a few scenes from the middle of it before, but never had a chance to view the whole picture. The writing was above par, so I stayed tuned, but it ended in a predictable way based on mainstream American beliefs about race relations.

As one would expect, the picture, though dealing with the race problem, was made by a white guy, Neil LaBute, who has done commercial pictures for fifteen years.

The premise is enough to spawn a mixed reaction: Samuel L. Jackson plays an older police officer who soon grows jealous, or rather hostile, to the interracial couple next door, played by Kerry Washington, who is in fact, in an interracial marriage with a Jewish man, I believe, and the stud-looking guy from Little Children, Patrick Wilson.

Within about thirty minutes, Sammy tells the couple that he doesn't feel right with them "doing whatever they feel like" in his neighborhood. Meaning that he doesn't want to see a seemingly happy black/white couple just prancing around his ville.

Now, right here, at this moment, lie all the film's deficiencies. We are basically witnessing the postmodern miracle: reverse racism. Something, which really doesn't exist in this country, as all the chips are still in the same hands as they were before the Civil War.

Throughout the film, the director posited that Jackson was the main source of the conflict in the film, and I agree that he is, but through its duration, LaBute had no interest in broadening his character to help understand his impetus. He did what is normal for a modern thinker: to make an individual out of his actions. Samuel L. Jackson's actions are seen as having no connection to the world around him, or the world that was around him. He is just seen as someone having crazy ideas that seemingly came from no place. This is what America does to flush out its critics. It calls them madmen, pushes them out by exclusion, and of course, the system remains in tact, but behind the walls, the invaders multiply.

To have a wider understanding of America, one must know that a large reason why the upper class is so successful in keeping power is that they keep us ignorant. The main concealment of knowledge is in the field of history. As long as Americans are encouraged to forget, and "get over it," then the populace can be more easy to control. And this urge to forget has been pushed upon the blacks with the most force. The very race that built this country, literally from the ground up, since before independence, has been told that it has to let go of its grievances, and join into the white system which was basically constructed based upon their degradation. So, still America is doing what it has always done, and can revert to so easily: pointing the finger at the black man, while holding the black woman in the other arm.

Samuel L. Jackson is seen as the bad guy, but his feelings are really part of a specific, generational ideology. Black people his age lived through segregation as children and young adults. They were the last generation to witness America's violent policy of division. And their anger is even more intensified as we moved out of the age of segregation in the 60's, and now are in the era of nationwide, de-facto discrimination. Now, racism is a private matter. The government has left it up to Wall Street and the Fortune 500. It no longer enforces it.

So, a director who is Neil LaBute's age, now about 47, is actually young enough to be uninformed about the past. He is, and I may trademark this, part of the Obama generation. The rise of Barack Obama marked an era of a new rewrite on racial ideology, but it is still one that leaves the blacks out, but only this time it is willing to absorb more of the good ones into its net. Though this term and this theory were being cooked up long before Obama came on television, he preached the message for the layman, and it made it understandable. Today, we are in an era of color-blindness, but the standards that apply to this new, blind judge don't really take black history into account. For instance, if a black person, like Jackson in this movie, still had grievances about the very history that drives social life today, then he would be considered a reverse racist, or called childish (what they've always been calling us), and told to get over it. So how is it possible that such an ideology could have been created but by the very people who have sought to dominate since the Shot Heard Round the World?

But the movie ends, unsurprisingly, with Jackson, the Bad Negro, being taken away, and the otherwise happy, status symbol-seeking mixed couple can be left to their good, productive lives. It may be an improvement that at least a movie can be made about race and still be mainstream, but I think this one points us in the wrong direction (which is really, in the end, a direction that evades criticism and makes it so that whites can still stay on top... of many things), but of course, by saying this, this means that I myself, am a black racist. :P