Corker Chase Makes Interpreter Worth Deciphering

When you run into people talking about Out of Africa and Three Days of the Condor director Sydney Pollack’s latest, the United Nations political paranoia thriller The Interpreter, the first and last thing you’ll hear them rave about is a three-pronged chase and surveillance smack in the center of the picture. They’ll say it’s mesmerizing, a pulse-pounding piece of building suspense and drama rivaling almost anything put on screen since we turned into the millennium. Some will even name drop, equating the sequence to some of the best ever put together by directors like Sturges, Dassin, Polanski, Frankenheimer and, the master of all things suspenseful, Hitchcock.

Pretty heady company, but they’d be exactly right. The sequence is brilliant, a bravura piece of filmmaking that just might be the single most singularly awesome moment put on film this year. Three tangents all looping upon and closing in on one another, crossing paths and forcing confrontation all with the growing tension of, quite literally, a ticking time bomb. It’s a masterful moment, beautifully edited by longtime Pollack collaborator William Steinkamp and meticulously shot by Steven Spielberg’s cinematographer of choice Darius Khondji. It’s edge-of-your-seat stuff, so forgive me if you sit in my seat and find bits and pieces of all ten of my fingernails sitting on the theater’s floor.

But, and how do I hate the fact that there is a but, the rest of The Interpreter isn’t anywhere near as good as this one fifteen minute sequence. Don’t get me wrong, Pollack knows how to make a handsome and intelligent thriller. With stars like Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn and Catherine Keener along for the ride, it’s definitely an easy sit. But the script, penned by a cadre of writers including Out of Sight writer Scott Frank and Schindler’s List scribe Steven Zaillian, is an unfocused meandering mess, hinting at great ideas and multifaceted intrigue but instead deciding to take the easy way out and not tackle any of the serious issues it so high-mindedly brings up early on.

With actors this good, however, this almost isn’t a problem. Penn plays Tobin Keller, a Secret Service agent assigned to protect foreign dignitaries returned to duty only two weeks (!?) after his wife’s tragic death. He’s given the task of investigating UN interpreter Sylvia Broom (Kidman, all winter-white distance and blank-faced emotional detachment), a dual citizen of both the United States and the small (fictional) African country of Matobo. Apparently, she overheard two men discussing assassinating the country’s hard-line dictator, a once-lauded pacifist named Zuwanie (Earl Cameron) now under UN investigation for genocide. Even though no one particularly likes this leader, the United States can’t very well have a foreign dignitary assassinated upon their soil, and even if the secretive Broom’s story has more holes than a loaf of Swiss Cheese, Keller is forced to take both the interpreter and her threat seriously.

The potential here is awesome. Pollack and company have an amazingly intricate plotline at their disposal, one that can go in some wonderfully interesting directions palpitating with both suspense and intelligence. Unfortunately, what begins as an intriguing political commentary masking as a thriller devolves into a rather rote revenge piece, one that, even then, doesn’t have enough courage in its convictions to take the characters to a place that isn’t forgone or unsurprising. It’s disappointing, almost fatally, and yet even with these faults I still can’t bring myself to write The Interpreter off as a complete waste.

Credit Pollack, his cast and the excellent team of craftsmen he’s assembled behind the scenes to help him out. Both Penn and Kidman, while not at their best, are still quite good. Even when just going through the motions and picking up a paycheck, these two are still better performers than almost any of the others Hollywood has to offer. Kidman, in particular, is quite good at times, her secretive blank-faced demeanor a mask for a troubled past and familial strife that only finally bubbles to the surface after a fiery near-death attack. The real star, however, is Keener, making the acerbically acidic most of her small roll as Penn’s partner. It’s worth the price of admission just to see her look up at a particularly nasty ceiling and remark, “Now that’s just rude,” a statement that fits both the character and the moment to wickedly mordant perfection.

Then there’s that aforementioned mid-movie set piece of coincidence, tension, suspense and terror. Long after the rest of the movie fades from memory, this one sequence sticks like Elmer’s to the cerebrum. The moment’s a corker, a modicum of energy and petrifying brinkmanship other modern-day thrillers only hint at. For this one, brief, brilliantly constructed moment Pollack reminds us all what true suspense is. Even if the rest of The Interpreter can’t live up to that elucidation, this thriller still manages to resonate because of it.

Film Rating: êê1/2  (out of 4)