The International (2009)

Satisfyingly unformulaic thriller. 

Clive Owen and Naomi Watts play the cutely named investigators Salinger and Whitman, who try to bring down the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC). 

It’s fast-paced and very nicely shot, with a stylish take on locations in Berlin, Milan, New York and Istanbul. In the case of Istanbul, the exact same area – the rooftops of the Grand Bazaar – would later be used for a motorbike chase in Skyfall (2012). The most dramatic section is an extended shoot-out in the NYC Guggenheim Museum, painstakingly replicated just for this film. 

The script avoids cliché and it’s refreshing that the lead pair do not end up becoming a couple. Both in terms of their personal lives and the corruption their work exposes, there are no easy solutions offered. But the very existence of the film emphasises the immense, insidious power of global finance and the way banks drive the behaviour of governments and determine the outcome of global conflicts. 

Watts is always reliable, and impresses throughout. Owen, meanwhile, surprises with a blend of toughness and vulnerability that’s just right for this particular story.

Skyfall (2012)

The third Daniel Craig Bond film is not only his best, but also the best Bond film overall. Directed by Sam Mendes, it’s pretty much perfect. The witty and dry dialogue is so much stronger than in previous episodes. And it’s visually stunning. The opening sequence (before the mind-bending titles over the Adele song) is a stunning piece of extended action in Istanbul involving a car chase through a crowded market, a shoot-out, a motorbike chase over rooftops, an absurd episode involving an excavator, a fight on the roof of a moving train, and, most dramatically, Bond being shot “dead”.

I’ve heard fans say that this film humanises Bond too much, with his family backstory and the “psychological” dimension, but for me that only makes it better. There’s even the first hint of homoeroticism in a Bond film. The villain teases him, only for 007 to counter “What makes you think this is my first time?”

It’s ideally cast, introducing the new Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) plus the new Chairman of Intelligence (Ralph Fiennes) and an impressively nasty villain called Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Rory Kinnear resumes his role as Bill Tanner, getting the part just right. And Judi Dench is wonderful as M. When she starts reading a poem by Tennyson as Bond runs through the London streets to save her (the film is also a British tourism brochure), it’s deeply stirring stuff.