Watching director Sydney Pollack's latest film, "The Interpreter," is like walking down a street where you hear a dozen languages, and not one of them your native tongue.
It's this notion of incomprehension, lost translation, and mystique that propels Pollack's film, but also leaves it feeling slightly rough around the edges.
Nicole Kidman is African-born U.N. interpreter Silvia Broome, who overhears an assassination plot against an African head of state - a once loved, now hated dictator of the fictionalized country Matobo - who is scheduled to address the General Assembly. Realizing her inadvertent discovery has made her a target of the assassins as well, and Silvia employs the help of a federal agent (Sean Penn) to investigate the threat.
What follows is a conundrum of events between Silvia, the opposition leaders of the threatened president, Edmond Zuwanie (Earl Cameron), and FBI investigators. "The Interpreter," which has a real, raw feel to it, unfolds like a live news broadcast about U.S. intervention in small foreign countries - you are never quite sure you're getting the full story, and are left instead with fragments of information to piece together on your own.
The relationship that Penn's character, Tobin Keller, shares with Silvia is an interesting one. Both are intimately connected with grief -Silvia's parents were killed by a land mine when she was a child, and Tobin lost his wife only a few weeks before the two met. Although this helps Silvia and Tobin find common ground, it also borders on the edge of romance - something which, if acted upon, would no doubt kill the credibility of the film's characters.
"The Interpreter" also is the first film to ever be shot inside the United Nations building in New York City. It's certainly a treat to catch glimpses of U.N. corridors and extras who are actual U.N. staff members. The shots add to a sense of realism that would have been otherwise corrupted by the fact that Pollack created a fake African country to represent where Zuwanie was from.
Additionally, despite an underlining tension throughout "The Interpreter," the main action only gets truly exciting toward the end, when Zuwanie finally arrives on the international soil of the United Nations to speak in front of the assembly. Although Tobin and other investigators have at this point uncovered a wealth of information about who might be behind Zuwanie's assassination plot, we are still in the dark about what might actually happen once Zuwanie steps behind the podium. The fast-paced dialogue, action, and music of these moments arrive like an instant dose of adrenaline. Even if we aren't exactly sure of what is going on, we're anxious about it.
At the end of "The Interpreter," we're finally given a chance to make sense of the film, and the result is a quite intriguing take on government affairs. Just be sure you can walk out of the theater without being paranoid enough to look over your shoulder every 20 seconds.
