'The Interpreter' - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

'The Interpreter': A classic thriller with a classy cast

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As sleek and solid as a late-'50s Cadillac, "The Interpreter" is very much your father's — perhaps, your grandfather's — thriller. And that's a good thing.

Universal Studios

'The Interpreter'

The verdict: A classically done international thriller, with a classy cast and director.

Director: Sydney Pollack
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, George Harris, Catherine Keener
Run time: 128 minutes
Release date: April 22, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for violence, some sexual content and brief strong language.
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Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman), an interpreter at the United Nations, accidentally overhears a whispered plot to assassinate Edmund Zuwanie (Earl Cameron), the despotic leader of the fictional African nation Matobo. Zuwanie's alleged acts of genocide — acts we see confirmed in a pre-credits prologue — have made him a candidate for censure by the U.N.'s Criminal Court, a move he hopes to circumvent by addressing the General Assembly.

Zuwanie's bloody hands make him a credible target, but is Silvia a credible source? That's what federal agent Tobin Keller (Sean Penn) means to find out. He isn't around to protect her as much as investigate her. And the more he learns about her past, the more problematic her story becomes.

The movie has the sophistication and self-assurance of a Hitchcock thriller. But unlike Hitchcock, director Sydney Pollack isn't inclined to leave fingerprints, as is evidenced by the diversity of his work, which includes "Tootsie," "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?," "The Firm" and "Out of Africa," which brought him Oscars for best director and best picture. Pollack's well-honed professionalism helps disguise what is, at times, a pretty preposterous plot.

Further, Pollack was granted permission to shoot inside the U.N. itself — access denied Hitchcock when he made "North By Northwest." The filmmaker puts his rare privilege to good use. He captures the building's determined "modernism," which now seems equal parts naive and self-important. And there's something almost grammar-school-ish about the primly egalitarian alphabetical seating, with New Zealand in front of the Philippines and behind Mauritius. (Well, at least they aren't seated by height.)

Yet Pollack, old-fashioned liberal that he is, doesn't diminish the organization either. The inherent polyglot nature of this tower of babble has an unexpected power with all these nations trying (some harder than others) to sort things out by talking to each other as the all-important interpreters sit perched above them in glass booths overlooking the assembly hall, like sponsors' boxes at Philips Arena.

All the tension isn't verbal. A trip on a city bus that gathers about half a dozen important characters together and puts them in peril is thrillingly staged, as is the opening sequence set in a deserted soccer stadium in Matobo.

Still, there is a lot of talk, most of it is done by Kidman and Penn. Their sparring matches are compelling, with just the right subtext of sexual attraction.

Pollack handles these Oscar winners' contrasting styles well. He warms up the sometimes reserved Kidman and reins in the often florid Penn. They both play wounded people — he a recent widower and she a loner with the wary manner of a disappointed idealist. The characters clearly respect each other, but trust is another matter.

George Harris is likable and amusing as one of Zuwanie's exiled rivals, now living colorfully in Brooklyn. So is Catherine Keener as Penn's partner. Her dry manner reminds us that, for all its implied glamor, guarding a VIP is still just a job. "Ma'am," she says as a stripper moves in on a delighted diplomat, "please don't touch the prime minister."