Short Review

An Interpol agent (Clive Owen) and a Manhattan district attorney (Naomi Watts) cooperate in investigating the extralegal activities of a huge multinational bank. Eric Warren Singer’s script highlights just the kind of supervillains audiences can love to hate; under Tom Tykwer’s tense direction, the bank’s nefarious deeds escalate from a couple of quiet murders to a public political assassination in Milan to a pitched battle blowing holes in all the exhibits (and several patrons) at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. As the bank throws subtlety to the winds, so do Singer and Tykwer—after all, there’s only so much suspense in spreadsheets and money laundering. The movie works almost as a parody of white-collar thrillers, giddy with its own excesses, and that’s the level on which it’s most enjoyable.