Review

Review Date: 24-April-05
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

The Interpreter (2005)

In 1999 Nicole Kidman and Sydney Pollack co-starred in "Eyes Wide Shut," a film that dealt with eroticism in such sterile fashion that it was both unbelievable and unpleasant. Now they have reteamed for "The Interpreter" (he directs and has a small role this time), and although it's very different and more bearable than "Eyes Wide Shut," it reminded me again of the perils of treating messy human issues with too much sang-froid.

The titular character (Kidman) works for the United Nations, where one night she overhears a plot to assassinate the president (some would say dictator) of her native African country. She reluctantly reports the incident to U.N. security after starting to fear for her life, and they hand the matter over to an integrated task force led by Secret Service agents Keller (Sean Penn) and Woods (Catherine Keener). Understandably, Keller begins the assignment by investigating the interpreter herself, which opens up a Pandora's box of complex associations that illuminate the cost of violence and war. Along the way, his growing connection with his subject impacts how he handles a personal ordeal of his own.

"The Interpreter" addresses knotty issues appropriate for a "mature" thriller, including politics, justice, grief, and the power of words, but every piece of the plot is neatly parceled out like a data drip in the IV of the beholder. Penn and Kidman (two great actors gamely trying their best) share a tense intellectual conversation; then somebody threatens or chases somebody else; then Penn and Kidman engage in another tense intellectual conversation during which she admits a secret from her past; then somebody dies or something blows up. And so it goes. We're supposed to believe that the two stars, along with an entire African nation, are coming apart at the seams, but there's no room for chaos or fury or desperation within the confines of the meticulous script. Neither the moody tête-à-têtes nor the blockbuster explosions generate any heat; it all feels completely bloodless (not to mention gratuitous, since it's obvious from the get-go who the bad guy is and that he's not going to succeed).

Much has been made of the movie's U.N. setting (Pollack was the first director to get access), and the atmosphere of global community and international intrigue is the film's single strength. Yet the setting's debut deserved better. "The Interpreter" might have worked as a straight thriller about tracking an assassin who brings the madness of civil war to neutral ground, or as a straight drama about troubled souls caught up in something huge which helps them heal their private wounds. Unfortunately, it tries to be both — ponderously, seriously, meaningfully — which apparently prevents a surrender to the rush of action or the passion of loss. In any of the languages spoken at the U.N., that translates into boring.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.