Watch Date: 19 March 2009
“The International” is a movie about a group Interpol officers going against a rogue bank located in Europe but dealt with clients all over the world. The bank was suspected to be involved in illegal arms deals around the world, supporting the overthrow of legitimate governments in Africa and many else. The recent “evil” the Bank is going to do is the selling of Chinese-made weapons.
However, the wrong-doings of the Bank were being made known to the Interpol by “insiders” within the Bank itself. The result: Death. Many of these insiders were either missing or found dead in a freak accident. These weird patterns of death have caused the Interpol guys scrambling to stop it. So here the movie starts…
One informer/insider, working as one of the top management staffs found himself with an undercover police in Italy inside a car (the police have been trying to illicit information about the bank). This informer agreed to make a deal and the police left the car immediately. A colleague of him, waiting across the road watched how his friend died in front of his eyes. He was assassinated by a passerby simply using a chemical poison without anybody noticing it. This assassin would also be the main focus of the story afterwards. The informer was also found dead in an accident near Luxembourg.
As usual, there must be the bad guys. They were the top management of the Bank, about five of them, looked very European, decent, and intelligent. Throughout the movie, they were shown as “bad” bankers, i.e. scheming to kill anyone who dared to leak their secrets and dealings. The most powerful of them is a Danish guy, who in the movie, once asked for his 7 year-old son’s advice what to do as one is getting deeper into a problem (what a great scene!). Also, this one old German guy, an ex-STASI (the East Germany secret police) and now a banker himself became the main intermediary to the sole assassin of the Bank by meeting him in art galleries anywhere around the world.
One terrific scene was in Guggenheim – an art museum in New York- the German guy met up with the assassin and asked him to kill the hero (one of the Interpol guys-oh yeah his name is Mr. Salinger, I kept on asking Makdi his name was!). The Interpol has been tracking the assassin and it was their best opportunity to catch this guy. After the old German left, the Interpol officers tried to arrest the assassin but it resulted into one of the best shooting scene I have ever seen! BANG! BANG! BANG! Anyway, the assassin did actually turn his back to the Bank but died due to the massive lost blood as he was shot by the guards of the old German guy (a lot them really!).
The Interpol managed to capture the German guy and put into an interrogation. This scene was also great, where you have to really listen carefully to the philosophical words said by both the old German and the interrogator (Mr. Salinger). One part that moved me when the German said something like this, “There is only logic in fiction but not in life.” They managed to come to a deal, by releasing the German and bring down the Bank from the inside. The Achilles’ heel of the Bank was that they ordered the killing of one prominent politician also a client of the Bank, Mr. Calvini while he was campaigning (the assignation scene was also terrific!). Obviously, Calvini has turned his back to the Bank by revealing the Banks bad dealings to the Interpol.
In an arms deal discussion in Istanbul, the Danish and the German (now a mole) guys met with a sophisticated Turkish missile dealer named Ahmat Sunay. They tried to arrange the selling of missiles to Syria as well as missile-jamming equipment to Israel. Without the Dane knowing about it, Mr. Salinger was also spying on their conversation. The German who tried to help the Interpol was then unexpectedly found dead and a chase ensued between the Dane and Salinger. They ended up on the rooftops of Istanbul suburbs. Before Salinger could do anything, the Dane was shot dead. Who shot the evil Banker? An assassin sent by the Calvini’s sons. His line was (in Italian), “Gratitude from the Calvini brothers.” The end.
The title of the movie does not represent the true gist of the movie. I think it is the most underrated movie of all time! What a great action packed movie it was and Makdi and I ended up satisfied that night.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
It was Friday evening; I've just returned from Labuan and decided to watch a movie at the GSC One Borneo. And as usual, Makdi joined in and we decided to watch any movie that might seemed to be interesting. Frankly, I suggested to him the movie "Sayang You Can Dance", but due to Makdi's dislike of the actor Dafi "Baik Punyer" Akademi Fantasia, we went for his movie choice for this week, namely "Dragonball: Evolution".
The movie is based on the popular cartoon characters of a comic book named "Dragonball" read by millions of kids around the world including Makdi, but not me. I've never been an aficionado of comic books except for Doraemon the Japanese Feline- Robot, and thus making me a total skeptic. :)
Anyway, the movie started quite well on introducing the characters one by one including the "white-boy" Goku, his Japs grandfather, his out of the world friends and obviously his nemesis (the green guy!). But the movie goes with weak plots afterwards; the bad guy came back to the real world after thousands of years of imprisonment by some magicians in China. So in order for him to be powerful again, he needed the help of Shen-Long, a dragon that will fulfill anybody’s wish with the precondition of collecting all of the five (was it five?) Dragonballs, just like Ali Baba’s gene in a bottle story. At the end (it is excruciating to go through the middle part, boring indeed!), the evil guy went for a “buku bertemu ruas” event that is a duel between him and the Goku.
As predicted, Goku won, killed the evil nemesis and used the 5 dragonballs to summon ShenLong. He wanted his mentor to be given a second life (an obvious khurafat!) and he got it. Oh yeah, his mentor was played out by the famous HK movie star, Chow Yun Fatt; and I think he’s the only positive factor coming out of the movie, his jokes were great!
To sum up, the movie is being superficial and bored me to death. While my Manga-enthusiast friend, Makdi, gave thumbs down too, saying “Macam tengok trailer!”
Conclusion: one half star of 5 and simply not worthy of your hard earned ringgits. Don’t go watch this movie please.
(This movie review was done after a two-week lapse between watching and the review itself. So I remind the reader that the review might be inaccurate due to memory lapse.)
This week I was in Labuan for a few days (since Monday) and returned to Kota Kinabalu on plane by Friday afternoon. I went there with Kak Tini, one of Biotech’s Programme lecturer and we stayed at the Grand Dorsett Hotel, in separate rooms obviously!
We were actually sent there by Dean Harun on short notice and his PA helped us much on the plane ticketing as well as the accommodations. The “purpose” was for us to be the SST’s “ambassadors” to the UMS-Kampus Labuan’s event and the event was a Seminar on The Qualitative Research, something that we in the Biotech programme simply won’t use it for whatever reason!
Anyway, what’s good about this trip were:
1. I’ve got a very spacious two-bed room (as shown below) equipped with the most modern equipment of communication called the flat screen TV (hahaha!)
2. Easy access to shopping places like Ujana Kewangan and other duty free shops of which I’ve visited once back in Oct 2008 for another SST event.
3. Making new friends among the aging and obviously older-than-me academicians (I’m 23 and the average age for most of them are 30! One of gals kept on asking my age, almost to point of admiring me, I almost vomit). Another person was Dr. John, I think he’s nice and had great mind!
4. The seafood restaurant, Anjung Ketam was terrific (C’est magnifique!). Only at RM35 per head, we ate probably the world’s best cooked prawns and crabs. The freshness. I’m hungry now
5. The forum that closed the Seminar was absolutely an eye-opener for a freshman like me. Again Prof Syed Azizi gave his views unfiltered on the Research University concepts, the social responsibility of UMS, the workload of academicians in Malaysia etc. He said that “ An academician is not a civil servant, we don’t simply followed but think on our own feet and having backbones. You must argue. And that’s why I became an academician myself.”
That’s a wrap for my review on latest worktrip and this really helps my SKT! Haha…
-Le fin-
Recently I have been a frequent visitor of the GSC in OneBorneo. Last night I went to hang out with Makdi at the cinema to watch a new movie, Watchmen by Warner Bros. As always, I'll be commenting on the film we watch together and so here it goes:
The story is about love and war, heroes and villains, idealism and reality. The movie was entirely narrated by one of the superheroes and he died at the end of the movie. The movie started with the killing of a person in an apartment of his in New York. The USA as entirely a different nation altogether, the US won the Vietnam war, Richard Nixon was voted in as President for the 5th time, there were a lot of looting and crimes und so weiter. All of these happen during the 1980’s and the Cold War has yet to end.
The killing brought us to the introduction of more superheroes; they were a group of them altogether formed during the 1940’s. They helped to win Vietnam for Nixon and also caused a lot of destruction in the US later on. Much of them was killed, I don’t know by whom, but they were left to about three of them or so?
The story line was filled with many unnecessary scenes and the dialogs bored us to death, I almost slept on Makdi shoulder! Some of the viewers even menguap loudly! Anyway, I found the graphic and cinematography were quite awesome, especially at the beginning of the movie when the villain spared with the one of the superheroes, they went into slow-motion mode!
Almost at the end of the 2 and half hours movie, one of the superhero was actually a villain, he wanted to detonate major cities around the world for “peace”!
He managed to do that unexpectedly and New York, Beijing, Moscow and London were almost evaporated by nuclear-like bombs bla2…The world ensued for peace, the Cold War went to an end and everybody live happily ever after…
The movie gets 3 out of 5 stars!
Le fin.
Anyway, after that we went to Mosha for dinner, chit-chatting a bit about friends and politics and near 10 pm parted to our own ways.
