Review of The Interpreter (2005) by Manuel S — 05 Aug 2010

The main problem with The Interpreter is simply that it isn't an interesting film. The plot moves at the speed of a depressed snail, and any genuine action is fleeting at best. The story, which revolves around a possible assassination attempt inside the UN General Assembly on the corrupt President of the fictional African country of Matobo, is very generic, and never are any details fleshed out to give the set-up any depth.

Edmond Zuwanie is supposed to be a Robert Mugabe-type character, but whether he is or not is never fully explained because he hardly ever appears on screen, and so we are left to make up our minds using second-hand evidence.

Kidman is perfectly passable as UN interpreter Silvia Broome (although her very forced South African accent does quickly become quite annoying), as is Sean Penn as a US Secret Service agent tasked with protecting her, and their budding friendship/love interest is just never involving to watch.

Although it is certainly interesting that this film was the first to be actually shot on location at UN Headquarters in New York, and that the crew went to the trouble of inventing a fake language, "Ku", to be used in the translated discussions, these facts cannot mask the truth which is staring us in the face.

Perhaps it was a lack of vision, or perhaps it was just its unending predictability, but the film never really gets started, and so you are never given the satisfaction of seeing it end. The Interpreter isn't interpreting anything, and is simply dull and boring to watch from start to finish.