I’d meant to devote some attention to this earlier, but it somehow slipped through the cracks, a la Congressional oversight circa 2003-04: according to The Hollywood Reporter, Naomi Watts has inked to The International, an espionage thriller penned by debut scribe Eric Singer. The plot centers on an obsessive Interpol agent who spearheads an investigation into one of the world’s most high-profile and powerful banking institutions in an attempt to expose them for corruption and worldwide arms brokering; Watts will play a Manhattan assistant district attorney who partners with the agent to take down the bank.

This sounds a lot better than the starchy, prestige-pic righteousness of Watts’ We Are All the Same; it sounds like a sort of high-grade genre companion piece to The Interpreter, starring Watts’ good friend Nicole Kidman. What makes it really sing, however, is the fact that Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) is directing for Columbia Pictures, and that Clive Owen will be playing said Interpol agent. That’s a damn good on-paper combination, right there. Tykwer has a touch with visual panache that’s almost peerless, but that’s largely forgotten because it’s not his only trick. After the still-birth of Perfume — an interesting movie that I mostly enjoyed, but that was certainly given a quarter-assed release from Paramount — it’ll be good to see Tykwer get back to something with the potential for a little pop.