The Interpreter (2005, DVD)

This is absolutely one of the best movies I have ever seen! It is a movie you can watch over and over and pick up things you missed the time before. Nicole Kidman is fantastic, as always, as is Sean Penn. This movie has so much suspense, but pay attention! It moves fast and can leave you behind! That's why I bought this DVD.

An intelligent film that keeps you guessing the whole way. Nicole Kidman does some of her best work here, and Sean Penn is always excellent. Well worth seeing, you won't be able to leave your seat!

Great action. A movie lover must have. Nicole and Penn were awesome, good acting, reminds you why those two are on the A-list.

I liked the movie, it was a suspense. It was a good movie. I like Sean Pean, just another movie with him was good to see.

I really enjoyed the movie, but you do have to pay attention to every detail. Both actors (Kidman and Penn) gave a great performance...

I was riveted by the performances of Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn in Sydney Pollack's "The Interpreter". As the film unfolds, both of their bleak outlooks on life - his worn on his sleeve, hers hidden beneath the steel resolve of a life that is acetic, on the surface - meet to dance a little with each other, and Pollack, wisely, does not pursue romance, just leaves the watcher believing that the two of them will remember each other for the rest of their lives.

Penn's character, Tobin Keller, is with the Secret Service. He has recently lost a wife, in more ways than one. Sylvia Broome (Kidman) has lost a brother. You see him die in the opening scenes, but don't know he's her brother until much later in the film. Both are reserved and steely in their resolve. Their mistrust and wonderment about each other is cloaked in elegance.

The setting is the United Nations, and Pollack filmed much of the movie there, a first. His cinematography (by Darius Khondji) makes you intimate with the UN, it is crisp and alive. Sylvia is an interpreter there, one of few who can speak Ku, the primary language of the African country, Matobo. (Matobo is fictional). Some of the political heat that Pollack has taken about the film is in the "fictionalization" of Matobo. In character and events, there is much that is reminiscent of real life African countries; Pollack has merely given us a hodge podge of likely events.

Broome's knowledge of the language allows her to overhear a threat against Matobo's dictator, who is to visit the UN. The threat is brought through channels, and the wheels of security begin to invade Sylvia's and the UN's existence. Assassination of Zuwanie (Earl Cameron) would be devastating for the world opinion of the UN, and cause even more instability in his little corner of the world.

In tense sequences, the drama plays out with the UN backdrop; the most exciting scenes taking place with a potential bomb on a bus - here Pollack shifts incessantly between the bus and the security forces who track and follow it from various venues in the city. There's also a remarkable scene for Penn when he finds, without really seeing, an assassin in Sylvia's apartment.

It becomes obvious that Sylvia is no innocent bystander, that she has an agenda, that unlikely as she seems, she is an activist; is she, in part responsible for the threat? Tobin Keller does not really know, he just begins to trust his instincts about her. As the film moves rapidly (it is a long film, but the time seems to go swiftly) to the end, the filmgoer realizes that he/she's been caught up in the performances strung together with some well-filmed action sequences, but that the message that Pollack was trying to convey got a little lost, and dragged its feet. As such, the time spent viewing it is well spent, but, as you reflect on the film, you're not certain it will have a lasting affect on you.

Some points that need to be brought up - Catherine Keener is a welcome presence as Tobin's partner. She's dynamite in what is little more than a cameo. And the DVD has some excellent extras, notably: A Day in the Life of Real Interpreters, and a feature on the use of the UN for filming, The Ultimate Movie Set: The United Nations (I was less enthusiastic about the features I normally like, an alternate ending, the deleted scenes...good thing they were deleted... and scenes of Sydney Pollack at work at the set).

See it, but rent or buy it used. Hotel Rwanda was much better.

Pollack, Kidman and Penn should be slapped for making this piece of psuedo-drama. Save your money. I wish I'd saved mine.