New film 'The International' is partly a globe-trotting thriller and partly architectural thrill shot at the Guggenheim Museum .

A complicated film, German director - Tykwer, who wowed us with his pulsating, wildly inventive 'Run, Lola, Run' of a decade ago, once again gives us fluid action, including an undercurrent of gritty substance, a tortured tone reminiscent of the action dramas of the 1970s, in what just happens to be his largest film to date.

Clive Owen, sexily rumpled, a mixture of obsessive self-destruction, plays the part of Interpol agent Louis Salinger. The film begins with the former Scotland Yard detective investigating shady dealings like illegal arms deals, power brokering, money laundering and more, at one of the world's most powerful banks, a story inspired by the real-life scandalous collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commercial International in the 1990s.

At the film's suspenseful start, while on the case, one of Salinger's undercover associates gets murdered in Berlin . Salinger teams up with Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (a stiff Naomi Watts) and the film centred on a bank conspiracy and murder, winds it way through New York , Berlin , Istanbul and Milan , in a bid to uncover the killing and the bank's myriad crimes.

The film with its themes of worldwide Machiavellianism and corporate corruption, is the thinking man's thriller, and cinematographer Frank Griebe ensures it is also a feast of the eyes for fans of modern design e. g. the iconic Guggenheim, the IBBC's Luxembourg headquarters that makes for an impressively icy fortress, while a wood-and-glass box on stilts perched precariously on a hillside is the home of the bank's president (Ulrich Thomsen).

Visually pleasing, with meat on the plot's skeleton, everything melds neatly to create a thriller that has unexpected substance and plenty of style.