With financial institutions in trouble, The International couldn't have been released at a more appropriate time. "It's incredible how timely it is really because you consider they were honing the script for two years, and then we started shooting the film over a year ago," said Clive while promoting The International in Los Angeles. "What's happened in the last year with banks and the way the attention's on them now and the way people are looking at them, it's incredibly timely. When I was sent the script, I was sent a lot of research that it was based on as well. A huge part of the movie is saying look at banks and are they using people's money appropriately? Are they completely sound institutions? And the whole world's doing that now, so it's incredibly timely."
It wasn't just the timeliness of the story that appealed to Owen. Owen really got into the fact this particular character had no vanity whatsoever. "There was no time for self-reflection. The guy is only looking one way and that's outwards. He's obsessed. He's a passionate, obsessive character. There's no vanity there and it was important the way I looked clothes-wise, the way my face looked that I always looked like I wasn't caring about [that]," said Owen. "He doesn't care about what he's putting out in any way, and that's not typical for a lead character in a movie. It was important that the clothes looked down because there's no time to be thinking about how he's presenting himself because he's so obsessed outwardly."
Owen's used to throwing himself into action roles, but playing Interpol Agent Louis Salinger took things to a new level of intensity. "You think of Children of Men and that was a very apathetic, given up character. This character has to drive the movie in terms of his anger, his passion. It's a paranoid political thriller and the guy at the middle of it all is railing saying, 'You've got to believe me, you've got to believe me!' You have to put that into every scene that you do because you've got to drive it because otherwise, if you don't care crazily about it and people don't buy that you're caring, then people aren't going to go with you. So every scene had to have this drive and this energy and this commitment, and it does because it's not the kind of movie where you can ever, ever go on the back foot. You've got to be driving," explained Owen.
46 year old Owen isn't afraid of doing his own stunts - up to a certain point. "At some point it becomes unsafe and I'm perfectly willing for somebody else to step in and do the dangerous stuff. I'm not one of those actors that runs around going, 'I've got to do it all. I've got to do it all.' I will do as much as I can for it to be believable and I want to do as much as I can, but I have no qualms. If someone says to me, 'This is now getting to a dangerous level,' I'll go, 'That's what this man's paid for.'"
Asked to name the roughest scene in terms of being physically demanding, Owen was quick to call out the Guggenheim scene which is the action centerpiece of The International. "It was the most physical and it took a long time. And it was always going to be a huge scene in the movie, even from the very first time I sat down with Tom [Tykwer, the director] to talk about the movie. He said, 'It's not going to be an action film per se, but when there is action, I want it to be incredibly tense and very explosive, the Guggenheim being obviously the biggest set piece.'"
"It just took a long time to film. There were two sets built. The first one was of the Rotunda, almost to scale. The studio in Berlin wasn't big enough to hold that so it had to be built elsewhere. Then the lobby was built as a set and then we got in the real place, so that scene bled through the whole movie. And it was incredibly well planned and put together. We were walking around the Guggenheim months before shooting, Tom talking to me, how he envisions the scene, we're walking up the rotunda and we had the whole thing really exquisitely planned out. And I remember the first full-blown rehearsal gearing up to start shooting the film with stunt guys and everything and we just mapped it all out. You got a very strong feeling at the end, if he comes anywhere near this it's going to be an amazing sequence because the thing about it is it's not just, 'Get everyone in there and let's shoot out the Guggenheim.' It's ever developing. It's like you go in there and things keep changing and developing and it gets crazier and crazier, but it's always this forward momentum I just think I haven't seen in a film. It's one of the most exquisitely realized scenes I've been involved in."
Owen added, "The thing about the Guggenheim that was important was that it didn't seem out of context with the rest of the film. You don't want to suddenly go, 'Now we're going to do this amazing big shootout in the Guggenheim.' It had to keep in with the rest of the film. It had to feel like it belonged in the movie and that's why I think he did it so brilliantly, because it's hugely entertaining. To trash the Guggenheim to that extent with snow coming in there at the end, it feels like a movie, but it's in keeping with what's gone before. It feels like it belongs there."
Page 2: Chemistry Onscreen and Upcoming Movies
