The International

The International plays the political thriller genre full on with occasional tributes to 70s paranoia flicks like The Parallax View. Fiercely directed by Tom Tykwer, himself an international director having helmed everything from Run, Lola, Run to the Kieslowski scripted Heaven to the criminally underrated Perfume: Story of a Murder, which incidentally was huge worldwide but barely released stateside, the tight procedural outline lets you know it's serious. This isn't a film where the stars, Naomi Watts and Clive Owen, are going to fall in love while globetrotting to investigate corporate malfeasance.
The International revolves around a particular bank entity that brokers arms between warring countries. Owen, an Interpol agent formerly with The Yard and ousted when his investigation into the bank came too close to exposing them, works with Watts, herself with the New York City district attorney's office and who has the American branch of said bank under surveillance for suspicion of fraud. The events transpire in a very conspiratorial manner. Moments after getting a bank officer to spill the beans Owen's contact has a heart attack. Moments after revealing the bank's nefarious motive a politician becomes assassination bait. This scene generates plenty of visual interest with tense establishing shots and the action being covered on any number of video feeds. A subsequent sequence with Watts and Owen using rudimentary skills to determine that there were in fact two shooters will appeal to fans of forensic evidence.
The structure Tykwer uses demands that the big finish is revealed quite early. We know who's responsible and what the conspiracy entrails. From the beginning to the end we follow Owen getting the hard copy facts he needs to bring down the whole affair. The International also lives up to its title by having as many locations as a Bond film. We are in rural Italian lake resorts as well as major cities from Gotham to Istanbul. In what has to be one of the coolest set pieces in a movie ever The International stages a massive shootout in New York's Guggenheim Museum with so much ammunition, good continuity and mayhem that no action fan will be disappointed. This explosive sequence plays as a counterpoint to the end of the film with its contemplative and bleak perspective of world economics.

Push

Push operates on more than one level. Sure it's about a bunch of psychic misfits who battle a mysterious government agency called the Division, all taking place in Hong Kong but the comic book aspects are overcome by the plot's density. The story's character are driven beings with emphasis on their discomfort with being different. Many of the scenes have a high contrast look with striking use of light in the background, and the architecture takes in the fact that bamboo is as strong as steel. Hong Kong makes a nifty location especially a movie like Push that plays with HK's high rise graphic as a near future sci fi metropolis, not to mention the look is the complete opposite of Batman's excursion into the Asian city (in Dark Knight).
Push was directed by Paul McGuigan who has, while not stabbing viewers with his vision, done some interesting work with plot and characterization in Wicker Park (not as good as the French original) and Lucky Number Slevin. The cast includes Camilla Belle, Dakota Fanning, Chris Evans, Maggie Siff, Cliff Curtis, Djimon Hounsou among others. It's like the director told the actors to just knock it out of the park and they acquiesced.
Division wants to control all the Pushers (can plant ideas in your head), Movers (telekinetic), and a host of other super ability monikers that these uncanny miscreants of society go by. Push makes no effort to really organize all its facts in digestible fashion; the film almost demands an alert viewer ready to roll with characters that appear once or twice and yet are intrinsic to the story.
McGuigan doesn't so much play against convention as embellish convention and Push has the ability to produce "oh yeah" moments of movie going pleasure, many of which are triggered by the vision of a dystopian society one nuance away from today. At the same time launching into a techno-rock beat at the onset of action has a Matrix feel that no film will escape for many years.