Review of The Interpreter (2005) by Manny C — 23 Apr 2011

If there's one scene-stealer in this thriller from the late Sydney Pollack (it was his final film), it's not Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, the former as an African-born interpreter for the U.N., the latter a widowed Secret Service man, it's the United Nation building itself. The nearly seventy year old building makes a fine film debut. Yes, it's quite a milestone, because every other time actors were seen at the U.N., including Hitchcock's North By Northwest, it was a set and not the real deal.

Sydney Pollack thought his thriller about an assassination attempt in the General Assembly needed authenticity, so he actually persuaded Secretary-General Kofi Annan to let him shoot in the building on weekends. And Pollack took advantage, shooting in the lobby, Security Council, gardens and conference rooms. Pollack does one better by crafting a prescient thriller that trades in senseless sex and action for potent political provocation. The plot focuses on by paranoid conspiracy, with unhurried, meaningful suspense. Up until its questionable ending, The Interpreter is laced with smart tension that Pollack used to dazzling effect in his modern classic The Three Days of The Condor.

Kidman is Silvia Broome, an interpreter whose specialty is the Ku dialect native to Matobo, where she was raised. She happens to overhear a plot in Ku to assassinate the Teacher, the nickname of Edmund Zuwanie (Earl Cameron, subtly menacing), the genocidal leader of Matobo, and he's on his way to Zuwanie. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of such places, they're all fictional. Any parallels to President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is purely intentional.

Things get even more complicated when agent Tobin Keller (Penn) is tasked with investigating the situation, and he doesn't trust Silvia, especially since she's lost loved ones to Zuwanie's brutal regime. He and his partner Dot Woods (Catherine Keener, so awesome as always) set up a surveillance system right outside Silvia's apartment, while the Secret Service follows her when she takes off on her Vespa and ends up on a bus in Brooklyn that becomes a target, shot with kinetic brilliance by Darius Khondji, who lights the U.N scenes amazingly.

Pollack keeps things simmering nicely. Kidman and Penn make an exceptional pair, giving the plot's global conflicts a human face. These two who are totally opposite form a unique bond, but it's not romance they're after. 'We never had time for a lot of things,' Tobin says to Silvia, illustrating how well these two create a bond that transcends cliched romance. They help to keep The Interpreter from getting lost in translation.