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'The Interpreter': Taut suspense drama grips audience

The premise of the heart-thumping political thriller The Interpreter is pure Hitchcock.

An icy blonde with a mysterious past overhears an assassination plot and attempts to thwart the killer while drawing the suspicion of the investigating authorities. Is she an innocent caught in a web of treachery or a would-be murderer out to avenge a personal debt?

Universal Studios 'The Interpreter' B The verdict: Pollack in Hitchcock mode, spinning a suspense yarn at the U.N. 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. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate "The Interpreter"   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Set against a backdrop of the United Nations, The Interpreter is full of the moral ambiguities of our post-9/11 world. The apparent target of this impending assassination is the prime minister of a fictional African nation called Matobo. He's a former liberator turned corrupt perpetrator of genocide, and is facing trial before the International Criminal Court if he is not gunned down first while addressing the General Assembly.

Director Sydney Pollack may not be the master of suspense that Alfred Hitchcock was, but he knows his way around the thriller genre (Three Days of the Condor) and knows how to deliver a taut seat arm-gripper of a movie. What it has in tension, though, it lacks in narrative tidiness.

The results should have been tighter, but that does not stop The Interpreter from being a classy, enjoyable popcorn movie with at least a veneer of political message.

The title character is multilingual translator Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman), a Matobo native with good reason to be angry at its grandfatherly leader, Edmund Zuwanie, since it was his land mines that killed her parents and sister years ago.

Her report of the assassination threat triggers the arrival of tenacious Secret Service agent Keller (Sean Penn), who initially browbeats her, but grows increasingly sympathetic as she becomes ensnared in this heady, increasingly lethal situation.

Kidman is tough, yet vulnerable, while Penn is typically intense. They are two star roles well tailored to their performance strengths. Catherine Keener handles the fairly thankless part of Keller's assisting agent and Pollack gets a Hitchcock-like cameo as their bureau boss.

Unlike Hitchcock, who had to construct his own United Nations set for North By Northwest, Pollock was allowed to film inside the landmark headquarters building. It becomes one of the characters, shown to maximum advantage during a security sweep, at General Assembly sessions and in Zuwanie's climactic address.

Hitchcock buffs are likely to be reminded of the concert hall assassination attempt in The Man Who Knew Too Much, just as Keller's across-the-street surveillance of Silvia's apartment has visual echoes of Rear Window. For that matter, Pollock's most suspense-filled sequences, a cat-and-mouse interlude on a city bus that may contain a suicide bomb seems right out of Sabotage.

Still, there is enough new within The Interpreter to keep moviegoers intrigued and involved. Cinematographer Darius Khondji gives New York a sunny, yet ominous look and conveys the dusty, impoverished contrast of Matobo in an opening that jump-starts the film. Credit James Newton Howard's music for contributing to the air of foreboding throughout.

Ultimately, The Interpreter is audience manipulation, but in a positive sense of the term. Whatever depth of feeling it has is supplied by the empathetic performances of Kidman and Penn.