The International banks on a bit of truth: a new film, with globalist bankers as bad guys, weaves threads of the truth into its tale of intrigue and adventure.(Movie review)

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The tag line for the new movie The International runs: "They control your money. They control your government. They control your life. And everybody pays." This resonates with many Americans who, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, sense at some level that there is an establishment --corporate and banking elites working together to influence national and international affairs, often at odds with the best interests of the country and its people.

Well-informed students of history and of the world of realpolitik recognize how near the truth the tag line is, but they don't expect to find many insights in films from Hollywood, broadly dedicated as it is to left-wing politics--plus being largely financed by the very establishment it so often claims to rebel against. There have been, of course, a few exceptional movies, such as The Brotherhood of the Bell with Glenn Ford.

The "they" in The International's tag line refers to globalist bankers. In real life, multinational mega-banks have been major factors in the world's chaos: funding wars and revolutions, unduly influencing acting governments, and generating misery via debt and inflation. Names that come to mind include the Rothschilds, who virtually turned monarchs into vassals while funding both sides of European conflicts; the Morgan interests, who birthed the Council on Foreign Relations--breeding ground of presidential cabinets; Kuhn, Loeb & Co., which supplied at least $20 million for the success of the Russian Revolution; and the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank, which provided low-cost loans to the Soviets at the height of the Cold War.

Some viewers may therefore find interesting the newly released The International, which features as its arch-villain a Europe-based multinational bank called the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC). The story's chief protagonist is Interpol investigator Louis Salinger (British actor Clive Owen). Formerly a Scotland Yard inspector, he had tried to investigate the bank in that capacity, but left the Yard after powerful influences thwarted his work.

When the film opens, Salinger and his Interpol partner Thomas Schumer are on the verge of a new breakthrough: an IBBC official is ready to blow the whistle on the bank, which has been planning to purchase missile guidance systems from an Italian arms manufacturer. But when Schumer suddenly dies of a suspect "heart attack," and the official dies in a car accident, Salinger begins to realize the extent of the bank's sinister power.

Joining Salinger in his pursuit of IBBC is Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), whose official interest in the bank began with its suspected links to organized crime.