Movie Review: The Interpreter

In The Interpreter, Nicole Kidman plays Silvia Broome a UN interpreter who accidently overhears a plot to assassinate the brutal African dictator Robert Zuwanie who is speaking to the General Assembly in a week. She reports what she heard and the Secret Service starts to investigate. Sean Penn is the lead agent Tobin Keller and Catherine Keener is his partner. At first they doubt her story, but since we saw her overhear the coversation we know she's not lying and have to wait for the agents to catch up to us; fortunately this doesn't take too long.

The film covers a lot of ground. In some parts we see the details of an investigation, from interviewing suspects, the moral issues of using someone as bait and the details of how to shoot an assassin so that they can't shoot or set off a detonator. In other parts we see the two leads build a relationship, learning to trust each other and revealing parts of their pasts. There is a wonderfully suspenseful scene as several suspects are followed simultaneously and manage to cross paths. There are also some twists and turns in the investigation, some background on African rebels, some cultural differences in dealing with mourning and forgiveness, and a little bit about working at the UN.

You'd think with the team making this film that all of these pieces would come together to form a great thriller with just enough political and moral allegories to give it some weight, but it doesn't quite gel. Instead there's just a little too much crammed in and not enough time spent on any one of the aspects. At a few points I wondered how the secret service agents did so much when we didn't see them. It's also obviously constructed to keep the audience guessing. When I found out that several different writers worked on various drafts of the script (five people get writing credits, how many more worked on it?), these issues made a lot more sense.

The Interpreter was clearly filmed in New York and much has been made of the fact that this was the first film ever to be filmed inside the UN. I supose it gives a good sense of realism, but never having been inside it I wouldn't have been able to tell if I was seeing a set or not. You certainly get no sense of the layout of the building or how that might influence what happens there. There are a few interesting cinematic helicopter shots over and around the building; but given the fantastic sense of geography Ridley Scott achieved in Black Hawk Down I wish I could see what he would have done with this opportunity.

Overall my complaints are somewhat unfair. The Interpreter is a very good film and kept my interest throughout; for much of it I was on the edge of my seat. It had the opportunity to be a great film and it isn't that, and that's a disappointment.