REVIEWED - THE INTERPRETER: The Interpreter is a formulaic but entertaining thriller set in UN headquarters, writes Michael Dwyer
Increasingly preoccupied with producing movies for other directors, Sydney Pollack has directed just three films over the past 10 years, and the good news is that The Interpreter marks a significant improvement on Sabrina and Random Hearts. However, as a thriller injected with an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia, the new film inevitably evokes Pollack's gripping Three Days of the Condor (1975), and suffers by comparison.
Its main asset is Nicole Kidman, porcelain-skinned and enigmatic in the role of Silvia Broome, an African-raised, Sorbonne-educated interpreter at the United Nations, and one of the few westerners who speaks Ku, a rare dialect from the southern African country, Matobo. This comes in remarkably handy when Silvia overhears a conversation in Ku about a plot to assassinate President Zuwanie, the ruthless dictator who rules Matobo, when he addresses the UN General Assembly.
Ku, Matobo and Zuwanie are all fictional creations, although any resemblance to Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe may not be a coincidence. The movie's other arresting performance comes from Earl Cameron, a character actor whose career stretches back to Thunderball and earlier. He invests the Zuwanie character with depth and credibility as the despot dolefully contrasts the warm reception he received in New York two decades earlier with the protests that meet his return and the maximum security his visit to the UN entails.
As the morose, sceptical FBI agent on the case, Sean Penn is as intense as ever, but seems lost in a role that offers him minimal meat or scenery to chew, and Catherine Keener has even less to do as his sassy sidekick.
Pollack himself turns up in a few scenes as their boss, but he ought to have stayed in the director's chair and kept his eye on the ball and the pace from slackening during the central section, which is singularly short on tension for a thriller.
Pollack personally negotiated a deal with Kofi Annan that gives The Interpreter the distinction of being the first movie ever allowed to shoot inside the UN building in Manhattan, and it comes as no surprise that Pollack's film repeatedly endorses and argues the UN case for diplomacy over violence as a solution.
Cinematographer Darius Khondji adeptly seizes upon this rare access to the UN, his camera prowling through its booths, corridors and the assembly room itself, and through many well-chosen New York locations, adding immeasurably to the movie's authenticity.
It is all the more disappointing, then, that the screenplay allows several implausible plot turns and some stilted dialogue to undermine all that effort. The problem probably lies with the movie's gestation through too many different hands. The story is credited to two English writers, Martin Stellman and Brian Ward, and the screenplay to Charles Randolph and two of the busiest script doctors in Hollywood, Scott Frank and Steven Zaillian.
