ENTERTAINTMENT

Movie Plot gets Lost in Interpretation
Jason Kimbro | Staff Reporter

I am awed whenever I see a great suspense thriller that touches the human spirit and fills it with hope and horror simultaneously. Sometimes, we can expect that to happen from a director like Sydney Pollack (“Out of Africa,” “Jeremiah Jones”), but lately his ability to make a great movie has dwindled.
Here we are now with his latest attempt, “The Interpreter.” It has a degree of suspense and even a decent story, but beyond this, we get lazy filmmaking, and we are left with another flick which will probably be in the 2-for-$11 bin at Wal-Mart before I graduate.
Nicole Kidman is certainly a winner in all our hearts, and none of us really expects her career to plummet anytime soon. Though this isn’t exactly a career-killing flick, she’d better start picking up the pace and finding better work.
Anywho, with this in mind, and with Sean Penn ready to be a halfway decent guy for once, here’s the gist.
Silvia Broome (Kidman) is an interpreter for the United Nations, so obviously she is the character of focus for this particular movie. Tobin Keller (Penn) is a secret service agent who specializes in keeping dignitaries’ dignity.
On a quiet evening in the sound booth of the UN, Silvia is picking up some of her things when she overhears a couple of people on the microphones talking about the assassination of an African dictator accused of ethnic cleansing.
Silvia waits until she has been practically threatened before she takes it to the authorities. Keller and his partner (Catherine Keener) have been assigned to protect the dictator, who just so happens to be coming to the UN building in New York City in a few days to present his case.
With this in mind, Keller must investigate Silvia to see if she is pulling a fast one over his eyes. The investigation leads Keller into a world of mercenaries and distrust amongst everybody who pretty much has anything to do with the small African country involved.
Keller, on a side note, is dealing with the death of his wife, who was killed just a couple weeks before in a car accident on her way back to him from a split in the marriage, but somehow he finds the strength to carry on and fall for Silvia while keeping his decorum as a federal investigator for the Secret Service, sunglasses and all.
After a few moments of intrigue, suspense and a cool bus explosion, we are brought to the end, which does have a decent twist amongst its usual claptrap and hackneyed suspense tools.
The movie seems to drag along amid the anxiety, and it is that anxiety that keeps you from falling asleep. But anxiety is tool of atmosphere, not entertainment. Or is it both?
Performances were basic. Penn always does a decent job. Kidman always does a decent job. Keener didn’t have enough of a role to shine as she usually does. And Sydney Pollack himself always throws him into the mix – he knows he is at least better than Keanu Reeves.
As for the artistic involvement of our film, we are yet again left with a basic, not-too-wonderful feeling. The suspense, as I mentioned before, is definitely there and is what keeps the movie from completely flopping, but is still short of spectacular.
The story was pretty good, but it got lazy. Lines are at times a bit juicy, but they are presented in a manner that makes them seem lame in a way that only Bruce Campbell can really pull off.
I went into the theater with hopes for a great movie. One of these days, I am going to finally know better and decide to become a completely bitter movie-goer and stop anticipating the release of every film that has a cool trailer. Not that I really anticipated this one; it just looked better than my other options.
Kutcher is just getting too old, and so are all the clones of him walking around college campuses (including ours) and high schools across the nation, and a flick with the womanizing Jay Mohr (“King’s Ransom”) just didn’t seem to tickle my fancy as much as one with Kidman.