Linha de Passe: DVD Reviews

Linha de Passe (DVD)

Stars Sandra Corveloni, Joao Baldasserini, Vinicius de Oliveira, Jose Geraldo Rodrigues, Kaique Jesus Santos
Directors Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas
Certificate 15
Distributor Pathe Distribution Ltd
Running Time 1hr 53mins
Format DVD (£19.99 RRP)
Released March 2nd

The Film
Brazilian film-maker Walter Salles clearly has his South American roots firmly embedded in his craft. Movies like Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries focused on the culture and traditions of his homeland and, after a brief foray into Hollywood with 2005 horror Dark Water, Salles is back doing what he does best with drama Linha de Passe.

Brothers Denis (Baldasserini), Dario (Oliveira), Dinho (Rodrigues) and Reginaldo (Santos) live with their very pregnant mother Clueza (Corveloni) in an extremely poor neighbourhood of Sao Paulo. Having different – and absent – fathers is perhaps an indication of why the boys are chasing very different dreams. Dinho hopes to find himself in the priesthood; Dario dreams of becoming a professional football star; Denis, already a father himself, chases one night stands; and the youngest (and only black child) Reginaldo becomes obsessed with a local bus driver he believes to be his father.

But despite their different goals, the brothers are all driven by a desperate need to find an identity away from their poverty stricken home life. And this is the central theme of Salles’s portrait of life in modern Brazil – how do you stand out, become a clearly defined person in a sprawling metropolis you share with 20 million other people?

Although his focus may be on the deeply personal, achingly moving plight of a family desperate to cross the lines of race and class, Salles is also saying a great deal about Sao Paulo itself. It’s a city struggling to remain within its boundaries, unable to contain the vibrant energy that oozes from its every sweaty pore. The sequences shot within this pulsating urban environment, including death-defying moped rides, contrast beautifully with the quieter, confined space of the boys simple home – just as their boisterous natures are a contrast to their mother’s reflective, grim determination to do right by her sons.

Energetic yet thoughtful, intelligent and provocative, Salles and his co-director Daniela Thomas provide another mesmerising snapshot of Brazil as the beating heart of modern South America.

5 stars

Extra Features
Sadly, nothing.

Berlin Film Festival 2009: Insider Report!

Film critic and writer James Mottram loves nothing more than to pound the international festival circuit, seeking out hidden gems and the next big thing. Now he's had some time to recover, here's James's insider report on the 59th Berlin Film Festival, held earlier this month...

Golden Bear winner The Milk of Sorrow


BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL 2009

With Tom Tykwer’s The International as its opening film, the fate of the 59th Berlin Film Festival was sealed on its first day. Admittedly, you could see what festival director Deiter Kosslick was aiming for. Starring Clive Owen as an Interpol agent on he trail of some corrupt bankers – everyone’s favourite hate-figures right now – it was a headline-grabbing opener. While attempting to replicate such classic 1970s conspiracy films as The Parallax View, it soon became clear that the timing of its story was fortuitous rather than prescient. Showing a lack of substance beneath the surface, it set the tone for many of the main films to come.


left to right: Notorious and The Countess

It wasn’t just that the Hollywood films in competition were bad – nothing was ever expected of hip-hop biopic Notorious and the Steve Martin stinker Pink Panther 2. The quality throughout the festival was poor, a fact reflected in the sluggish business that took place (or rather didn’t) in the nearby European Film Market. This year, there was no 2 Days In Paris to gee up the buyers; instead, you got Julie Delpy’s second film as director, the far less successful Euro-period-pudding, The Countess. Starring Delpy as Elizabeth Bathory, the 16th century Hungarian aristocrat alleged to have killed virgins and bathed in their blood, the only scramble this was likely to cause was towards the exits.

Little wonder jury president Tilda Swinton and her beleaguered team were left to reward the more unsung directors with the main prizes. A mixture of magic realism and social conscience, Claudia Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow took the coveted Golden Bear. The first Peruvian film ever to be in competition, it follows a girl whose mother was raped during the rebel violence that afflicted the country in the 1980s and ’90s. Meanwhile, another Latin American entry, Adrian Biniez’s Gigante, the story of a lonely supermarket security guard who becomes obsessed with a cleaner, also picked up three awards – including the Jury prize, shared with German director Maren Ade’s Alle Anderen (Everyone Else).


left to right: Gigante and Alle Anderen

The only American entry to win a prize was Oren Moverman’s credible directorial debut The Messenger. Moverman shared the prize of Best Screenplay with his co-writer Alessandro Camon for their powerful tale about two US soldiers (Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster) whose job it is to inform families that their loved ones have died in combat. The only surprise is that an excellent Harrelson didn’t also pick up Best Actor. That went to the Mali-born actor Sotigui Kouyaté for his admittedly moving performance in London River, the story of a Muslim man and a Christian woman (played by Brenda Blethyn) both searching for children in the wake of the city’s 2005 terrorist attacks.


left to right: The Messenger and London River

While it’s all too easy to assume that Swinton’s own eclectic tastes evidently steered the jury towards more offbeat decisions, it’s hardly as if the more established auteurs offered up anything of note. Stephen Frears’ take on Colette’s Belle Epoque-set novel Chéri reunited him with his Dangerous Liaisons screenwriter (Christopher Hampton) and star (Michelle Pfieffer), yet such a nostalgic get-together failed to re-produce the magic of their former glory. Primarily a love story, between the spoilt, listless Chéri (Rupert Friend) and the veteran courtesan Léa deLonval (Pfieffer), there are times when the film was as languid as its male hero.

The Countess

Another British director, Sally Potter, infuriated most with the aptly titled Rage. Featuring an all-star cast, this satire set in the fashion world made Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter look incisive and inspired. Essentially a series of talking-heads, all espousing upon the evils of the industry in front of brightly coloured backgrounds, the most you can say about this cut-price effort was that it was economically responsible in a time of global recession. Offering not one nugget of profundity, it swiftly becomes as grating as the ghastly characters – Jude Law as a cross-dressing model named Minx; Dame Judi Dench as a bitchy critic and Eddie Izzard as a repugnant fashion mogul among them.



Jude Law (yes, really), Eddie Izzard, Steve Buscemi and Judi Dench in Rage

Neither did the French directors conjure up anything spectacular. Bertrand Tavernier’s In The Electric Mist, a steamy take on the James Lee Burke novel, had great potential. His first English-language film since his 1986 jazz-era tale ’Round Midnight, it starred Tommy Lee Jones as a Louisiana detective on the hunt for a serial killer. But with the actor channelling just about every other part he’s played recently, it’s no surprise this potboiler has already gone straight to DVD in the US.

At least François Ozon’s latest Ricky, based on a short story by British writer Rose Tremain, held interest for an hour, before unravelling before our very eyes. The sort of film that might be spawned if David Cronenberg and the Dardenne Brothers decided to collaborate, it’s almost impossible to talk in depth about this tale of a mother and her new baby without giving away its central twist. Suffice it to say, Ricky’s physical development is as unusual as it is unforgettable. But while social realism gives way to black comedy, Ozon never manages to sustain it – and the film drifts off into the clouds in the final third.


left to right: In the Electric Mist and Ricky

At least the final film I saw provided some form of closure. Like The International, Theo Angelopoulos’ The Dust of Time was also a globe-hopping yarn that stopped off in Berlin. Featuring Willem Dafoe as director who gets word that his teenage daughter has gone missing, interwoven into this is the story of his mother Eleni (Irene Jacob) and the love she had for two men, Jacob (Bruno Ganz) and her husband Spiros (Michel Piccoli). Full of the Greek-born director’s trademark graceful images, perhaps it was apt that in the year that marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film’s final magical shot was of a snow-covered Brandenberg Gate.

The Dust of Time

James Mottram

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Walter Salles: Exclusive Interview!

Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles has enjoyed a prolific career, with films like Foreign Land (1996) and Central Station (1998) winning him both critical acclaim and a clutch of awards. In 2004, his Oscar-winning Che Guevara drama The Motorcycle Diaries introduced him to an international audience, and the next year he made his Hollywood directorial debut with horror remake Dark Water.

His first feature since then is new drama Linha de Passe, which takes Salles back to his South American roots. On the eve of its DVD release, Lorien Haynes caught up with the director for an exclusive chat about this deeply personal film...

Walter Salles

Linha de Passe is an elegy, a tapestry of working class life in Sao Paulo. A tale in perpetual motion. A depiction of four brothers and their pregnant mother, struggling within their poverty trap, within their claustrophobic four walls, within a sprawling megalopolis, to realize ambitions and dreams and identity. To find meaning.

Shot as a documentary drama, with intense realism and a sense of being inside Brazilian culture and sociology, filmmaker Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) and co-director Daniela Thomas (Foreign Land) combine a complex narrative interweave with powerful visual storytelling. Its poignancy, sophistication, intelligence and insight make it an important film and we spoke to Salles on the eve of its DVD release.

Salles is currently in his birthplace, Rio de Janeiro, where “it’s 45 degrees!” We begin by asking about the films inception. “Linha de Passe was born,” he explains, “out of eight years experience as a documentary film maker. Where I explored different facets of Brazilian culture, where I shot documentaries in places I’d never seen before. The film follows the tradition initiated by our Cinema Novo movement, our version of Neo Realism meets Nouvelle Vague, where filmmakers in the ‘60s worked on exploring the fringes of Brazilian society and re-defined Brazil on screen.”

Despite all this tradition, Salles wanted to create a sense of Sao Paulo today. Believing cinema’s purpose to be a living testimony of our time, he reveals that the film depicts “a vital contemporary city with a population of 22 million, that never sleeps - you can be in a traffic jam at 3am. It’s tough, it’s violent and, like Brazil itself, it is evolving at alarming rapidity. Few countries change as much in two days as Brazil. We are a country whose identity is in the making. We are un-crystallized and defined by clashes between social classes. And the urban landscape is in constant metamorphosis. If you drive in Sao Paulo one day and try to find the same location three years later it will have changed, completely. It is a city with no regard for history, which lives in the present and that, as filmic material, was very interesting to show.”

Just as he sourced his motivation in geographic and gritty urban realism, Salles sourced his character narratives from true-life stories. First he wanted to show family; “how the tightening of ties between family and friends is the only way to survive here. That families have to fight not to disintegrate, to keep their integrity as a unit, while independently trying to find a second chance in life.”

To this end he selected four stories, of four fatherless brothers all trying to reconstruct their destinies. One is trying to be a professional footballer, another is seeking solace in Pentecostal religion, another in women and the youngest in an obsessive quest to find his unknown father. “These stories were the starting point,” the director explains. “We did a great deal of research, it took three years to learn their universes well enough to feel we could realize a family from within.”

To cast the boys, Salles sought relative unknowns, actors who had only worked in theatre - all except Vinicius de Oliveira, who was his lead in Central Station. And identical to the process he employed filming The Motorcycle Diaries, they “rehearsed prior to shooting for three months. We improvised. We played with the material. 30 percent of what you see on screen is a direct result of this collaboration. It helped because the second most difficult aspect of working on the film was working with actors who were extremely talented but complete beginners on screen.

“The most difficult aspect ultimately,’ Salles continues, “was shooting within the city, within the traffic itself. We never got permission to film on the roads, so it was all guerrilla filmmaking. The entire crew were on motorcycles, drifting through Sao Paulo. My co-director Daniela, faced with having to direct from the back of a moped said ‘Now I have to forget I’m a mother of two and get on with it!’ It was dangerous but the only way to do it.”

Salles and Thomas have worked together before; their last collaboration was on 1996’s Foreign Land. “I normally direct Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and she Tuesdays and Thursdays!” Salles laughs. “I’m joking. It has to be a completely holistic process. The fact we rehearse and define the grammar of the film first results in a very fluid form of co-direction. If you don’t blend and share all aspects it won’t work. I know the Coens and The Darden Brothers share a similar form of synchronicity.”

For the DVD release, Salles and Thomas have used the opportunity to expand on their understanding of Brazilian culture. “I’m not fond of explaining every single scene,” Salles says. “It eliminates the magic of the process. But the DVD does include interviews with all of us that should create a deeper insight into the Brazilian world and how much the society is changing on a daily basis. It should make it clearer what we’ve been trying to do.”

Now the film is set to find a wider audience on DVD, does Salles find himself personally drawn to any one character, to any one strand of the narrative? “No,” he says without hesitation. “I empathise with all of them. You have to if you want to grant your characters a real density, a true three dimensionality. Like an actor, as a director you should never judge your characters. You have to keep the whole in mind. Understand motivation and this alone will allow the audience to bond. People are more touched when they understand fallibility, the reasons why a character fails in life, the reasons why someone desperately wants a second chance. It is only this that can generate a genuine emotional bond between all of us.”

Lorien Haynes




Linha de Passe is released on DVD on March 2,
from Pathe Distribution Ltd.


Check back tomorrow for our review of the DVD!

The Unborn: Review

The Unborn

Stars Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, James Remar, Cam Gigandet, Meagan Good, Carla Gugino
Director & Screenplay David S Goyer
Certificate 15
Distributor Universal Pictures
Running Time 1hr 27mins
Country USA
Opening Date February 27

Horror is an extraordinarily difficult genre to get right. In the desperate search to scare the bejeebus out of a wide and varied audience, and although they may have the very best intentions, film-makers all too easily descend into cliché. It’s far simpler to employ tried and tested formulas for fright than to think up something unique. At worst, these by the numbers shockers are utter trash; at best they are fairly entertaining but instantly forgettable. The Unborn is one of the latter.

Beautiful young Casey (Cloverfield’s Yustman) lives a fairly privileged life. When she’s not hanging out with her gorgeous boyfriend (Gigandet) and spunky best mate (Good), she lives in a huge house with her successful father (Remar, in a blink and you’ll miss it role). The only blight on Casey’s perfect horizon is the fact that, many years previously, her mother (the excellent Gugino, relegated to flashback duties) hung herself after being institutionalised for mental illness. When Casey begins to suffer strange visions, she is drawn to find out more about her murky past – and the discovery that she had a twin brother who died in the womb leads to a terrifying battle against a destructive supernatural force.


Spooky child spirit… Check. Bizarre, inhuman visions… Check. A dark family history… Check. Writer/director David S Goyer’s script is like a dot to dot of modern horror, with echoes of everything from The Ring to The Grudge and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Just not nearly as good. True, there are some successful moments - although there is a reliance on CGI for the scares, it is mostly effective and, at times, downright disturbing.


But the film’s fundamental flaw is that these solid spooky moments hang on a narrative that’s not nearly strong enough to bear their weight. At various points the story touches on mysticism, religion, the supernatural and Nazi experimentation, never seeming sure which explanation holds the most water. None of them, it transpires, as the film often descends into silliness – an underused Gary Oldman as a rabbi performing a pantomime exorcism in an abandoned mental hospital, for example, or The Wire star Idris Elba suddenly becoming a rabid, possessed psychopath. Some of the narrative falls victim to excessive exposition, with characters frequently uttering the phrase ‘Have you ever heard of….’ in order to circumnavigate massive leaps of logic.



If you’re a fan of creepy kids, spooky effects and upside-down-headed dogs, The Unborn will be a fun, albeit flimsy, Friday night flick. If you’re on the hunt for a strong, memorable addition to a genre overpopulated with identikit carbon copies, then you’ll most likely be disappointed.

3 stars

Adventureland Trailer!

I've managed to get my hands on the brand new images & trailer for hilarious new Miramax comedy Adventureland, starring Ryan Reynolds and Kristen Stewart

Set in the summer of 1987, the movie sees recent college graduate James (Jesse Eisenberg) forced to take a job at a local amusement park Adventureland to make some much-needed cash. As he makes new friends and falls in love, James realises that he may just be having the time of his life...

Written and directed by Greg Mottola (Superbad), Adventureland hits UK cinemas in Summer 2009. In the meantime, have a chuckle at the trailer..

Inglourious Basterds: Teaser Posters!

Universal Pictures have sent over two new teaser posters for Quentin Tarantino's World War II thriller Inglourious Basterds, starring Brad Pitt.

They look pretty darn cool, and you can also check out the film's trailer by scrolling further down the page...

Inglourious Basterds is released on August 27, 2009.

Academy Awards 2009!

THE WINNERS

You can understand why British film-maker Danny Boyle looks more than a little shell-shocked. He was undoubtedly the star of this year's Academy Awards, with his feel-good Indian drama Slumdog Millionaire taking home a stonking eight awards.

The statuette Boyle is clutching is for Best Director; the film also won Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Original Song ('Jai Ho') Best Sound Mixing and Best Adapted Screenplay. Bagging all the awards it was nominated for, with the one exception of Best Film Editing, the film's success proves what international critics have been saying - that Slumdog Millionaire is an astonishing piece of work. The cast and crew definitely have good reason to look so proud...


Another big British winner was Kate Winslet, who surprised nobody for picking up Best Actress for her role in Stephen Daldry's The Reader. Beaming from ear to ear as she accepted her awards, she was clearly utterly delighted to have been honoured by the Academy.

Also expected by all was the posthumous awarding of Best Supporting Actor to the late Heath Ledger, for his career-defining role as The Joker in Chris Nolan's epic The Dark Knight. Ledger's mother Sally, father Kim and sister Kate collected the statuette on behalf of the actor, dedicating his award to his three-year-old daughter Matilda.


It was Penelope Cruz who took home the Best Supporting Actress award for her comic turn in Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Not a real surprise to anyone who's seen her performance... apart from Cruz herself, it seems. "Has anybody ever fainted here?" she asked when collecting her Oscar. "Because I might be the first."

In fact, the only real shock of the night came in the form of Best Actor. After scooping the other big awards (including the Golden Globe and BAFTA) for his comeback role in The Wrestler, many thought Mickey Rourke was a shoo-in to take home the Oscar as well.

In fact, it went to Sean Penn who was honoured for his exceptional portrayal of homosexual politician Harvey Milk in biopic Milk. And, give him his due, Rourke didn't do what a certain Eddie Murphy did when he failed to win the expected Oscar for Dreamgirls and walk out in disgust; rather he graciously applauded Penn's achievement along with everyone else in the room.


Other winners on the night included Wall-E (Best Animated Feature); The Duchess (Best Costume) Japanese movie Departures (Best Foreign Film) and Man on Wire, which took home Best Documentary. That film's subject, tightrope walker Philippe Petit, certainly had a novel way of celebrating...


For a full list of winners, visit the Official Oscars Site.

THE PRESENTER

This year's choice of presenter was something of a departure for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Usually choosing to go with a well-known comedian, such as Billy Crystal, Jon Stewart or Elln DeGeneres, fronting 2009's proceedings was Wolverine star Hugh Jackman. But any worries about whether he could pull off such a massive task were gave his own unique spin to recent epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Jackman then joked, sung and high-kicked his way through a very energetic evening, which included impressive duets with Best Actress nominee Anne Hathaway and pop diva Beyonce. We have a feeling the Academy won't hesitate to invite Mr Jackman back...

THE PARTY

And, of course, after the ceremony drew to a glamorous close, all winners, nominees and presenters went in search of more champagne and to party the night away at the traditional Governors Ball...


Best Actress Kate Winslet with Reese Witherspoon


Best Supporting Actress Penelope Cruz with Adrien Brody


Best Supporting Actress nominee Marisa Tomei


Slumdog Millionaire stars Dev Patel and Freida Pinto


Best Actor Nominee Frank Langella and Anthony Hopkins


All images courtesy of AMPAS

The Tattooist - DVD Review

I have a tattoo. I had it done at university and, unlike so many other things I did under the influence of student, I'm still proud of it. True, I did it to win a bet - but the victory was so rewarding, so utterly joyous, that it still makes me smile every time I catch a glimpse the design in the mirror.

But, it hurt. A lot.

If you think about it, the thought of someone injecting indelible ink into your skin using a very sharp needle is insane. And yet there are many who are prepared to undergo such torture, be it to win a drunken bet or because they genuinely admire the beauty of the designs. And, whether the thought of a tattoo makes your skin crawl or you're adorned from head to toe, new horror DVD The Tattooist is certainly an intriguing prospect...

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The Tattooist (DVD)

Stars Jason Behr, Mia Blake, David Fane, Robbie Magasiva
Director Peter Burger
Certificate 18
Distributor Icon Home Entertainment
Running Time 1hr 31mins
Format DVD (£15.99 RRP)
Released Out Now

The Film
Tattoo artist Jake (Behr) believes that body art may be more than just skin deep, that some designs contain mystical elements with the power to heal. When he stumbles upon a traditional Samoan ‘tatau’ ceremony, and unwittingly releases an angry spirit out for revenge, Jake embarks on a journey that takes him across the world to Auckland – and deep into the dark heart of an ancient mysticism he can’t begin to understand.

Black Sheep director Jonathan King has turned in a screenplay that’s a world away from his baaa-rmy shlock horror – The Tattooist is a deadly serious thriller, played for scares not laughs. And it’s successful thanks to it attention to detail; the film’s Samoan cultural adviser Pa’u Tafaogalupe Mulitalo has ensured that the spiritualism and beliefs that makes up the film’s backbone remains true – and believable. This grounds the supernatural story in a sense of mythical realism, giving the film an effective, creepy atmosphere. Thankfully, too, director Peter Burger doesn’t roam too far into the absurd; he embraces the simple facts that tattooing is painful and that the Samoan beliefs of postmortem revenge are spooky, and so lets the story play itself out without lashings of pantomime gore or distracting CGI. That said, the sight of victims being literally consumed by ink is a spine-tingling visual trick.

Although slow in places – particularly towards the end when a great deal of exposition has to be shoe-horned in – The Tattooist is an interesting, neat little thriller that effectively combines ancient customs with modern film-making techniques. And, as the first movie to come from Ghost House Underground, the new home entertainment imprint of the Sam Raimi co-owned Ghost House Pictures, it’s an enticing promise of things to come.
3 stars

Extra Features
First up is a commentary from director Peter Burger and star Jason Behr. It’s certainly entertaining – even if Behr remains in the background – as Burger is so enthusiastic about his feature debut it’s impossible not to be swept along. He mainly focuses on the actors and locations, although he also talks at length about the film’s effective visual style.

There are three very short deleted scenes, including an epilogue, while more substantial at the featurettes looking at the tattoo designs and the film’s colour palette. A short clip shows a man having a genuine Samoan tattoo, and there is a clip of Burger being made a Samoan Chief. Finally, there’s a standard behind the scenes feature in which all involved wax lyrical about the experience.
3 stars

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The International - Interview & Clips!

They own your money. They run your life. They control everything.

No, it's not the new business model for the British banking industry, but the tagline for Sony Pictures' new action thriller The International, released on February 27, 2009.

Directed by Tom Tykwer (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), The International sees Interpol Agent Louis Salinger (Clive Own) and New York Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) go up against one of the world's most powerful banks. After discovering the multi-national institution is involved in many illegal activities including money laundering, arms trading and the destabilization of governments, Salinger and Whitman's investigation takes them around the world...

It certainly sounds like a must see for anyone who's felt the desire to get revenge against their bank manager for overdraft charges. And to get some insider information, we spoke to stars Clive Owen and Naomi Watts about what we can expect.


The International is actually based on a true story; did you have to undertake a lot of research for the film?

NAOMI WATTS [Director Tom Tykwer] gave us a bunch of literature to read. It's mind blowing to think that can go on. Obviously, this is an extreme level where so many people are involved, and there are so many links that it's impossible to prove them guilty. The fact that [Louis and Eleanor] are brave enough to go up against it is what makes it interesting as a movie. Two people can make a difference!

CLIVE OWEN The thing that attracted me to [the film] was that it felt like those Seventies paranoid political thrillers; it was intelligent, it was well researched, it was based in fact, but at the same it was obviously a big international, exciting thriller. So it’s not dumb, but no one’s pretending it’s not a big movie.

It's certainly a very big movie, with a number of impressive set pieces. How did you prepare for such an intense level of action?

CLIVE OWEN I thought, ‘Well, having done Shoot ‘Em Up, I don’t need any more gun training!’ I think the Guggenheim sequence in this film is probably one of the most exquisitely realized I’ve ever been involved in. It was a huge scene within the movie, and Tom’s [Tykwer, director] preparation was extraordinary.

Months before we even started shooting, he and I walked around the Guggenheim and he had the whole thing planned out. When we did the first full rehearsal with all the stunt guys, you felt that it was going to be a pretty extraordinary sequence.

[And here, for your entertainment, is that very same Guggenheim sequence in all its glory...]



You certainly shot in some amazing locations, including Turkey, Italy and Germany, as well as New York City. How do you cope with the schedule?

CLIVE OWEN You arrive, there’s no real time to acclimatize, you hit the ground running and you start shooting. On a film like this, environment is hugely important. You’re trying to suggest that this huge international bank is almighty and all powerful, and it’s very important that my character runs around the world trying to get close to these people, because that’s how far their reach is.

NAOMI WATTS The scene we shot in Milan was probably the most challenging. It was very fragmented. There were so many people in that scene, [at the] the political rally. It was shot very much out of sequence. When you shoot things like that, you've got to stay focused and it was spread out over many days.


Director Tom Tykwer was obviously central to helping you stay on track during a demanding shoot. What was it like working with such an involved film-maker?

CLIVE OWEN I think Tom Tykwer is as good a director as I’ll ever come across. He is really unique and has a grip on all aspects of filmmaking. He’s a bit of a workaholic, but I had a really great time with him. I really liked the script to begin with, and he was constantly honing and refining it. But the rhythm of his work is one that, by the time you come in there to shoot it, we’ve ironed out anything that needs to be ironed out. We don’t have those last-minute discussions on set.

NAOMI WATTS He's so well prepared at all times. Firstly, what he did was create a schedule that suited me and my newborn baby. I got to the set about two months after they had started shooting and I shot five consecutive weeks which is all I thought I could manage, so I loved that he did that for me. He's a very sensitive and fair person.

Once I read the script, he talked about his style and how he wanted to shoot the film. He sent me a bunch of films from the '70s, these kinds of political thrillers so I could get in the mindset of it all.


Clive, many of your on-screen characters have faced some serious adversity; how do you put yourself in their shoes?

CLIVE OWEN My job is to put people in the place of understanding what your character’s going through. It’s simple, you can do it in a movie kind of way and try and look cool with your gun, but I’m more interested in trying to convey what it might really be like to be in that situation. That’s my job as an actor, and I always treat those scenes like that, so I’m never trying to look cool. It’s about trying to put people in the position, and think about how terrifying it would be to be here right now.

And Naomi, how did you prepare for your role?

NAOMI WATTS I met with an Assistant District Attorney in New York. I was able to talk with her about what it's like in the office and being a woman operating very much in a man's world. She basically said you have to be on your game the whole time. Most of these men are pretty tough and they'll try to take advantage of you. Not in a sexual way but in a power struggle kind of way so you'd better be on your game and not be slinking around the office!


Clive, were you a bit disappointed that you didn’t get to have a romantic moment with Naomi?

CLIVE OWEN It would have been a very cliché thing to suddenly have them fall for each other. I really like it because I think it’s very mature, and what drives them is their commitment to what they’re trying to do. There is definitely an attraction there and, you know, in another time, another place, there is the possibility that they would make a good couple, but ultimately it’s about two people who are very committed to their cause, and they share that.


Want to know more? You only have a week to wait until The International hits your local cinema but, in the meantime, here's the trailer...



Interviews by Judy Sloane