Thrill gone from new Kidman-Penn drama
Director Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter is an almost entirely defanged political thriller. At moments it evokes memories of Pollock’s previous success in the genre, the Robert Redford-Faye Dunaway classic Three Days of the Condor, its James Newton Howard score conjures memories of The Fugitive and its Secret Service subject matter is reminiscent of In the Line of Fire. But while The Interpreter is a handsome, well-made production, Pollack seems to have borrowed these films’ plot elements and atmosphere while somehow leaving the thrill on the assembly line.
Nicole Kidman stars as Silvia Broome, an interpreter at the United Nations from the fictional sub-Saharan nation Motabo. Pollack and all five of the film’s screenwriters created Motabo as a fictional nation in the throes of political upheaval and suspected genocide. The painfully idealistic Silvia has left her war-torn homeland to become a part of the U.N.’s ‘quiet diplomacy,’ as she calls it.
One night Silvia returns to her sound booth to retrieve her bag of flutes (that’s right, she is a flutist as well). She overhears a plot to kill Motabo’s tyrannical leader, Dr. Zuwanie, who is scheduled to address the General Assembly in a few days. The plotters speak in Ku, a language only Silvia and a few others at the U.N. understand.
When she reports the threat, Secret Service agent Tobin Keller (Mystic River’s Sean Penn) is assigned to investigate the case. Silvia greets the potentially nation-shaking conspiracy with the requisite paranoia, but Tobin remains suspicious of her honesty and motives. He uncovers Silvia’s bloodstained backstory, turning her into a potential suspect, but then again, as is typical for paranoia thrillers, everyone is given a backstory that makes them a suspect.
Pollack infuses the film’s potentially intriguing premise with several action sequences meant to elicit suspense and audience awe. Unfortunately, almost all fall flat. Two particularly ineffective scenes involve a black Mercedes Benz attempting to run down Silvia’s vintage moped and a mask-clad attacker penetrating Silvia’s East Village apartment. During the latter scene — and all the others that take place in Silvia’s spacious, trendy pad — I could not help but wonder how an interpreter could afford such a space in such a pricey neighborhood. If a life advocating diplomacy is the key to a posh pad, just tell me where to sign.
The film finally gains momentum halfway in with an effective sequence in which all the film’s antagonists meet on a crosstown bus. Only here and at moments in the film’s overdrawn climax do we see what The Interpreter could have been. Mostly, it is a tame, apolitical film that stands in the dull middle ground between B-movies and prestige pictures.
Fortunately, the film’s mediocrity does not prevent Kidman from wowing us. Playing the icy, reserved Silvia, Kidman commands the screen with her unparalleled charisma and adds the notoriously difficult South African accent to her repertoire. Penn, however, cannot match Kidman’s magnetism. Although Tobin is given a generous volume of backstory in the form of a recently deceased ex-wife, Penn plays him as a man whose facial expressions oscillate between a cool gaze and a phony look of concern — and not much in between.
Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich) impresses as Tobin’s wise-cracking partner. Keener’s trademark dry delivery gives the movie some of its most memorable moments. When she and Penn canvas a suspect’s apartment to find a light fixture wired with explosives, she moans, ‘Now that’s just rude.’ Imagine a Barbara Stanwyck-esque fast-talker, but with a holster.
Pollack’s misuse of the majestic U.N. building on New York’s East Side is ultimately more disappointing than his inability to choose between a whodunit and a politically conscious drama. The first filmmaker ever to be allowed to film inside the building — even Alfred Hitchcock was denied access for North by Northwest — Pollack does not portray the building with the majesty and weight it deserves, but rather as just another venue for action. And that, even in a film wrought with other missed opportunities, is a real crime.
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