After the small talk about their respective Oscar wins, Sean and Nicole run out of things to chat about.

The Interpreter

directed by Sydney Pollack (Random Hearts)
story by Martin Stellman & Brian Ward
screenplay by Charles Randolph (The Life of David Gale) and Scott Frank (Flight of the Phoenix) and Steve Zaillian (Gangs of New York)

produced by Tim Bevan (Thunderbirds) and Eric Fellner (Thunderbirds) and Kevin Misher (The Scorpion King)

starring Sean Penn (I Am Sam), Nicole Kidman (The Stepford Wives), Catherine Keener (Death to Smoochy), Jesper Christensen (The Inheritance), Yvan Attal (Bon Voyage), Earl Cameron (Thunderball)

lowdown: 
Political conspiracy thriller set in the United Nations.

low expectation: 
        Nicole Kidman has three kinds of movies.  Small scale films like The Human Stain and Birth don't do a lot of business regardless of her star power.  High profile Hollywood junk like The Stepford Wives and this summer's Bewitched make her the money and allow her to have fun while entertaining the masses.  Midway are those well made old-style pieces that aren't typical multiplex fare nor inaccessible indies like Dogville.  The Others, The Hours and on a grander scale Cold Mountain fit this category.  The Interpreter may also fit there, being too big-budget for the film snobs but too smart for the popcorn crowds. 
     This is also the kind of picture in which great actors don't go all out in their performances.  Penn, looking bored and whispering a lot, and Kidman, with her annoying voice and blank expressions, won't win more Oscars for this.  Still, Cary Grant had one of the most obnoxious voices in cinema history, but his United Nations involving film, North By Northwest, is an addicting action thriller nontheless.  Pollack is no Hitchcock, though.  Pollack's talky films feature the very opposite of Grant's scene in the cornfield with the crop duster. 

con:  The sequence with the bus blowing up makes me think of The Peacemaker for some reason
pro:  Pollack's involvement with Turner Classic Movies' "Essentials" series gets him continued props
despite a waivering career

follow-up:   
    Unnecessarily long and painfully repetitive film about diplomacy versus vengeance, it might also have the worst cutting I've seen since Bulletproof Monk and that is bad. 

website:
TheInterpretermovie.com

synopsis/press release:  
       Academy Award® winner Nicole Kidman stars for Oscar® winner Sydney Pollack--director of such genre-defining thrillers as The Firm, Absence of Malice and Three Days of the Condor--in The Interpreter, a suspenseful thriller of international intrigue set inside the political corridors of the United Nations.

Kidman stars as South African U.N. interpreter Silvia Broome, who inadvertently overhears a hushed, after-hours conversation in the General Assembly Hall. And what she hears could topple a government...if she can just survive long enough to get someone to believe her.

In the right hallway, at the right time, all it takes is a whisper to tip the balance of power.

From Universal Pictures, Working Title Films and Misher Films, The Interpreter is directed by Sydney Pollack, produced by Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, and Kevin Misher (The Rundown), and written by Charles Randolph (The Life of David Gale) and Scott Frank (Minority Report).

Expectation Key


there's no possible way I will ever see this

I might eventually see this but I'm not really expecting much

anticipating the release of this one but I'm sure to be left unsatisfied

such high expectation of this film only leaves room for disappointment