The average thriller these days is so dumbed down and poorly constructed that even though Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter is put together from pieces of a half dozen other, mostly better, movies, it still qualifies as best thriller of the year so far. Just by dint of having only one explosion, and that explosion being essential to the plot, it's already got a leg up on most of its competition.
Veteran filmmaker Pollack, who directed the seminal, 1975 thriller, Three Days of the Condor, and the solid, 1993 thriller, The Firm, knows how to put a movie together, even if he hasn't been in the director's chair since 1999's soppy Random Hearts. The Interpreter moves deftly along its relatively predictable course, but has enough twists and turns to keep your interest, and is crafted with skill by Pollack and his two lead actors, Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.
Kidman plays the title character, a white African named Silvia Broome from the fictional nation of Matobo, who works as a U.N. translator. Alone, late one night, in the sound booth, she overhears what she believes is a plot to assassinate Mubatan dictator Edmond Zuwanie. Secret Service agent Tobin Keller (Penn) is assigned to investigate. Things quickly become thorny, involving two rival Matoban leaders, Zuwanie's weasely head of security, and Silvia's own past.
The Interpreter takes on political issues from the start, setting up Zuwanie as a one-time liberator now accused of ethnic cleansing, and giving Silvia a complex relationship to the nation of her birth, where whites were once oppressors but are now freedom fighters, along with blacks, trying to overthrow the tyrannical Zuwanie. The first production allowed to film inside the United Nations. The Interpreter has an undeniably authentic feel, both in its scenes at the United Nations and elsewhere in New York City. Pollack captures some of the magic of '70s thrillers like his Condor, and makes excellent use of the city. Cinematographer Darius Khondji shows us a New York of clean, metallic buildings that are menacing in their impersonality, indifferent to the tense political maneuvering that goes on within their walls.
While the script, crafted by five credited writers, doesn't really explore new territory, Pollack's execution makes the film work. He stages two excellent sequences in which he and editor William Steinkamp come off as masters of crosscutting. One features the aforementioned explosion and takes place on a city bus, where several of the principal players have converged in an improbable but somehow inevitable bit of plotting. There's a similar sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage, and Pollack builds nail-biting suspense in much the same way, as events march inexorably to a conclusion that the audience sees but the characters do not.
The film's second highlight is the climactic sequence, with Keller frantically putting pieces of the mystery together as Zuwanie is addressing the entire General Assembly. Like Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate last year, The Interpreter mixes contemporary politics in with its thrills, but is at its best when simply running on pure adrenaline and suspense. At more than two hours, it sometimes gets bogged down in exposition, and all the politics aren't as exciting as the one explosion.
Kidman and Penn both bring credibility to their roles, and the generic "international" accent that Kidman affects works perfectly for the native of a fictional country. Penn, whose recent performances have been full of bluster, plays Keller as subdued and introspective, even though he, like Silvia, is nursing some serious personal tragedy. The always reliable Catherine Keener provides welcome comic relief as Keller's acerbic partner, and Pollack himself shows up as Keller's gruff boss.
The Matt Damon Bourne films have probably done more to truly capture the spirit and international flavor of the maverick '70s thrillers, but The Interpreter comes close, and in a world of XXXs and National Treasures, close is more than good enough.