German director Tom Twkyer’s latest English-language offering immerses viewers in the murky worlds of international banking and political intrigue with a scintillating story that might have been culled from one of today’s headlines.

That story concerns the fictitious IBBC, an international bank headquartered in Luxembourg with a long history of financing illicit arms deals, revolutions and the kinds of (often illegal) covert operations in which national governments want to keep the underwriting off the books.

The object of numerous international probes by Interpol and other law enforcement entities, the IBBC has successfully deflected all accusations of wrongdoing. Despite a reasonable amount of evidence to the contrary, why the bank has remained unscathed is just one of many interesting plot-points contained in Eric Warren Singer’s tangled screenplay.

That script is dense in the extreme, which probably explains why this police procedural cum political potboiler struggled at the box-office, held back from generating word-of-mouth because the film was incorrectly marketed as an actioner.

There’s that kind of action in “The International” (2009), but almost all of it is confined to one extended set piece staged at New York’s Guggenheim museum. Ironically, it’s probably the film’s weakness moment, an overlong, overdone and over-the-top explosion of gunfire that adds nothing of substance to the otherwise heady plot; a sequence whose only purpose seems to be aimed at providing material for the film’s trailer in order to attract younger moviegoers.

Although this scene is disconcerting and throws the undercurrent of backroom tension for a loop, it isn’t fatal to the film’s overall impact thanks to fine performances, an ultra-realistic story and Twkyer’s consistently impressive directing, which includes many of his patented, geometrically composed long-shots, each of which is striking.

In fact, not since Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni first pioneered the use of natural and manmade structures as narrative devices has the technique been so effectively used to convey man’s plight and place in a world increasingly overwhelmed by the forces of corporate greed and political corruption.

Clive Owen is in perfect existential form as Interpol agent Louis Salinger, a rumpled former Scotland Yard cop who has been trying to bring down the IBBC for years with nothing to show for it other than a lot of dead potential witnesses and a sullied reputation.

Owen is paired with Naomi Watts as Eleanor Whitman, an assistant New York district attorney who joins Salinger on the case. Armin Mueller-Stahl and other European actors round out the cast, each inhabiting his character with authenticity.

Twkyer regular Frank Griebe is again behind the camera, and again the cinematography is sleek and assured, capturing in visual form the David vs. Goliath subtext the film depicts. It’s an interesting brew, arresting and disturbing in an all too familiar way, ultimately strengthened by the director’s lack of allegiance to storybook convention.

Jimmy Gillman can be reached at gillmanemail@yahoo.com.