**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Sydney Pollack, Yvan Attal, Jesper Christensen, and George Harris
Directed by Sydney Pollack & written by Martin Stellman, Brian Ward, Charles Randolph, Scott Frank, and Steve Zaillian
2005
128 min PG13
With the success of indie films like �Hotel Rwanda� and �Moolaade,� it�s apparent that there�s an audience for watching Africans suffer. Mainstream Hollywood has responded to this market in its typical fashion: by making a thriller about white people. In this case, a UN translator with a shady past overhears an assassination plot and becomes the center of a conspiracy. The target of the assassins is a once-progressive African liberator who has become a genocidal dictator. For an illustration of this transition, see Woody Allen�s �Bananas,� in which the leftist revolutionary, now victorious, announces that underwear will be worn on the outside to ensure its cleanliness and that �all girls under 15 are now 15.�
Not surprisingly, the parts that Hollywood is used to�the thriller, the procedural, the explosions, the B movie stuff�work pretty well. The deadly encounter on the bus is surprisingly effective, and the shooting in the interpreter�s apartment is a clever use of handguns and a PG13 rating. There�s a David Mamet-lite flavor to the Secret Service goings-on: the flashing lights, the clipped, necessary-dialogue-only, the discussion of where to shoot a guy so that he won�t detonate a dead man�s switch. The crispness of the talking is probably the work of reliable screenwriters Steve Zaillian (�Hannibal�) and Scott Frank (�Minority Report�). The slimmed-down approach to dialogue works well in a movie called �The Interpreter:� the agent (Sean Penn) and the interpreter (Nicole Kidman) get caught up in several word games (�gone� vs. �dead,� for instance).
The stuff having to do with international politics and all that�the A movie aspects�may work in the broad strokes, but is not exactly inspiring. Africa and the UN are more of a flavor, added to standard material, than subject matter. Kidman�s interpreter could just as easily have come from any war-torn part of the world or rough neighborhood. The clich� of her and the cop �becoming involved� is mostly avoided, possibly because Penn�s Secret Service partner is Catherine Keener. That�s what I�m talking about.
I found Penn�s cop refreshingly unmannered: his main method of interrogation is to stare at Kidman in a resigned, weary manner, and to cock his head to one side when he know she�s lying. He�s an uncluttered, straightforward professional. Kidman is adequate, which, Oscar or not, is mostly all she ever is. Why her character is a white African instead of a black one is open to all manner of, well, interpretation. Pollack has some fun with out-of-focus shots, but for the most part his direction is clean, with low, ominous horns during the right moments. It�s as if he has uncritically translated the style, as well as the content, of a too-serious trash airport novel directly to the screen.
Finished Thursday, June 16th, 2005
Copyright � 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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