Keep your friends close, and your financier closer. That's the gist of The International, which ticks along quite nicely for a slow-burn thriller until about three-fourths of the way through, when its final act takes too long, and the film peters out like a deflating balloon. German director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) is an inspired choice and star Clive Owen turns in a solid, engaging performance, yet the movie simply crawls to a halt, as if some part of it got stuck in the dirt just as it was touching down. Viewers looking for an intelligent, deliberate respite from Bourne-style, quick-cut shaky-cam thrillers will have to wait a little longer.

Owen plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent still stinging from the dissolution of a previous attempt to bring down the International Bank of Business and Credit. While the IBBC makes friends with potentially volatile third-world countries and buys up warheads to sweeten the deal, Salinger and Manhattan assistant DA Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) are following a path of death and illicit deeds they hope will lead right back to the bank. Hopping from country to country in search of a solid candidate for interrogation, they find their investigation threatened at every turn by someone who's been bought, paid off, or killed in order to dead-end the search.

I'm a fan of police procedurals, and while The International starts out thick with details about the bank and its political dealings, I found it highly entertaining. It's during this half of the film that Owen is particularly effective -- he gets the exposition across with a spark in his eyes that keeps the film alive for the patient viewer. His intensity sets the tone where the pacing doesn't: while the film boasts a fair amount of action, including the solidly-entertaining shootout in the Guggenheim museum at the center of the ad campaign, this is still a dramatic thriller and not a breakneck revenge film. The shootout was added after-the-fact due to poor test screenings; while it's the action highlight of the film, don't let the TV spots sucker you in on the promise of gunplay alone.

Fans of director Tom Tykwer will appreciate the clinical but often stunning cinematography and highly specific uses of sound design and music throughout the movie. Watching the trailer, I wasn't able to sense his fingerprints on the movie, but in the final picture his signature is evident. It's also refreshing to see an R-rated thriller, especially from Sony, whose projects generally seem interested in playing to the widest possible audience. Only until after the film was going did I realize it wasn't rated PG-13; it's not extreme, but it still enhances the picture.

Only a few short scenes after the Guggenheim shootout, however, the film hits a speed bump and doesn't know where to go. Sitting in the theater, it was easy to feel the audience's frustration at the film's somewhat confusing, perplexingly ambiguous ending, which seems to suggest things it doesn't mean to (I thought something was happening in the final shot that my friend disputed), and skims over the movie's intended conclusion (due to the way it's presented, some of the ending feels more like an epilogue). The most disappointing aspect, however, is that seems like it could have been fixed -- with snappier editing and a little more finality, the same material could have made for a satisfying conclusion.

Reviewers often complain about films with convoluted, hard-to-follow plots, and I find myself wondering why it was so hard to understand. While it isn't a masterpiece, I was engrossed during the first hour and a half of The International, and I was thinking it might be a rewarding little thriller for the right kind of filmgoer. Yet at the last minute, the movie falters, and while they say "it's the thought that counts," it's hard not to feel twice as let down that the film can't quite deliver. Those who want to see the good 75 minutes of The International would be better served saving their ten bucks -- in the financial institution of their choice -- and renting it on DVD.