The Interpreter (NYT)

April 22, 2005

MOVIE REVIEW | 'THE INTERPRETER'

Her Mission: Save the World Without Offending Anyone

By A. O. SCOTT

Silvia Broome is not just an employee of the United Nations, where she works as an interpreter. She is also a passionate believer in its goals and ideals, and holds fast to the conviction that it offers the best hope for addressing the violence and corruption running rampant across the globe. When she explains this to Tobin Keller, a Secret Service agent assigned to protect her from a sinister conspiracy (and also to investigate her possible involvement in it), he responds with a smirk. "You've had a tough year," he says.

And that is pretty much the only contact that "The Interpreter," a glossy new picture directed by Sydney Pollack, makes with the world as we know it. This kind of movie, stuffed with intimations of faraway strife and people in suits talking frantically on cellphones and walkie-talkies, is conventionally described as a political thriller, but "The Interpreter" is as apolitical as it is unthrilling. A handsome-looking blue-chip production with a singularly impressive Oscar pedigree, it disdains anything so crude, or so risky to its commercial prospects, as a point of view.

The role of the United Nations in the face of shifting geopolitical alliances and ferocious ethnic conflicts is a rich and complicated topic, as a glance at the past few weeks' newspapers will confirm, but none of that complexity troubles the shiny surface of this film, which is mainly interested in the United Nations as a piece of architecture. It should be said that the organization's headquarters building on First Avenue at 44th Street in Manhattan is beautifully shot, both from without and within. Darius Khondji's cinematography captures the clean, elegant modernism that at once expresses the building's idealistic purpose and places it in a bygone era of internationalist optimism. Making the United Nations look good is easy compared to the movie's main imaginative ambition, which is to turn Nicole Kidman, apotheosis of all that is blond in Hollywood today, into the embodiment of African suffering. Silvia, Ms. Kidman's character, may have a European education, but her roots are in the troubled (and fictional) African nation of Matobo, where her parents were white farmers.

Lest we think that she was therefore aligned with apartheid or colonial oppression - "The Interpreter" is not, after all, Mr. Pollack's sequel to "Out of Africa," or at least not quite - we see old photographs of Silvia and her brother bearing arms in a noble multiracial cause. She is fond of quoting the wisdom of the Ku, a tribe whose views on vengeance and mourning are at odds with the grim state of her country. (The moral of "The Interpreter" is, in effect, do as the Ku say, not as the Ku do.)

Matobo is ruled by one Dr. Zuwanie (Earl Cameron), a vaguely Mugabe-like figure who followed a familiar path from liberator to genocidal maniac, and who has squandered both the hopes of his people and the respect of the United Nations member states. It is a measure of just how bad he is that both French and American diplomats agree that he should face some kind of justice, and also that his two main rivals - an old-school socialist (Curtiss I' Cook) and an apostle of capitalist development (George Harris) - have put aside their differences to oppose him more effectively. As it happens, the dictator is on his way to New York to address the General Assembly, and Silvia, returning to the office to retrieve her African flutes, overhears someone plotting to kill him when he makes his speech.

This strikes Tobin (Sean Penn) as too convenient to be entirely coincidental, and as he digs into Silvia's background he begins to suspect that she is more deeply enmeshed in Matobo's intrigue than she lets on. The great disappointment of the script is that it fudges the question of her involvement, leaving some gaping holes you can discuss with your friends at your favorite Matoban restaurant after the movie.

More thought has gone into addressing the challenge of giving Mr. Penn something to do that couldn't be done by a second-string cop-show actor on television. To ensure that Silvia does not suffer alone, Tobin is provided with his own back story of grief and loss, which Mr. Penn must relate in tearful moments when the plot takes a break from third world misery.

At first, Mr. Penn and Ms. Kidman, his brow as dramatically furrowed as hers is smooth, promise some interesting chemistry. Their first scene together has a brisk, parry-and-thrust rhythm, as Silvia, hiding behind a lock of hair gone strategically astray, frustrates Tobin's attempts to figure her out. But after that, nothing much happens. Ms. Kidman, as ever, nimbly switches between vulnerability and clever toughness while adding another unusual accent to her roster of achievements.

Mr. Penn seems a bit more uncertain, burrowing with his characteristic earnestness into a role that hardly exists. From time to time, you may detect a wink of Brandoesque detachment, but more flagrant subversion would have turned this character from the pedestrian confection of a screenwriting committee into someone worth watching.

That committee - which included Steven Zaillian, who won an Oscar for "Schindler's List," and Scott Frank, nominated for "Out of Sight" - failed to come up with either a diverting whodunit or a plausible moral melodrama. Mr. Pollack's direction walks the line between competence and complacency. As the day of Dr. Zuwanie's arrival approaches, the pace of the narrative accelerates, the action moves from Turtle Bay to Crown Heights and something blows up. The two principals are driven by their respective hardships into a chaste moment of snuggling, and Tobin's partner, Dot, fires off some impatient wisecracks.

Dot is played by Catherine Keener, a wonderful, underused actress who, if there is any justice in Hollywood, will someday have her own chance to embody the sufferings of the African continent.

"The Interpreter" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has violence and some profanity.

The Interpreter

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Sydney Pollack; written by Charles Randolph, Scott Frank and Steven Zaillian, based on a story by Martin Stellman and Brian Ward; director of photography, Darius Khondji; edited by William Steinkamp; music by James Newton Howard; production designer, Jon Hutman; produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Kevin Misher; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 123 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

WITH: Nicole Kidman (Silvia Broome), Sean Penn (Tobin Keller), Catherine Keener (Dot Woods), Earl Cameron (Zuwanie), George Harris (Kuman-Kuman) and Curtiss I' Cook (Ajene Xola).