‘The International’

There’s an extraordinary shoot-out at the Guggenheim Museum coming to theaters this week; unfortunately, you have to sit through “The International” to see it.

Heaven knows the time couldn’t be more right for a movie that portrays international banks as the root of all evil, but this movie’s plotting is so tepid and unengaging that it fails to capitalize on the zeitgeist. Maybe that’s what happens when rich people make movies about this kind of thing.

Clive Owen stars as Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent who has spent years trying to bust IBBC, an international bank that’s been a major money-laundering facility for organized crime and which is now branching out into arms trading. (The one interesting idea in Eric Warren Singer’s script comes in a scene where a character explains the reason behind the bank’s involvement in missile sales: “They don’t want to control the conflict. They want to control the debt that comes after the conflict.”)

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