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Rating:  - Somewhat interesting
This was film was half bad. It wasnt anything special or great, but it kept my interest throughout. It seemed believable and plausable, the characters, for the most part felt realistic. The plot was somewhat confusing and overblown though. Its not very suspenseful nor is it very mysterious, but all in all, it wasn't terrible either. Its just one of those films that you can watch, and say OK, and just move on. Its forgettable.
Rating:  - A could-have-been movie
For the first half of the movie I thought "The Interpreter" was going to be good. Then it got bogged down in twists and turns that happened so fast one hardly had time to figure out what was going on. In the second half, new and undeveloped characters galloped in and then out. It was hardly satisfying when one finally learned who the really bad guys were because even the "good" guys seemed like bad guys. I believe I could have understood the plot better if I watched it a second time, but I have no desire to do so because I never found much reason to care what happened.
I'm not a fan of either Nicole Kidman or Sean Penn, but her nearly lifeless portrayal of Silvia made Sean's Secret Service man look really interesting. Kidman does not act at all using her face ... it is almost frozen and pretty much unchanging, we have no idea what her inner emotions are. She seems to be a one-note actress wherever she appears. But Penn's face is excellent at letting us know what the interior man is feeling. As he has aged, it seems to me that he has gone past the arrogance and shrillness he once displayed in almost every role.
It was the plot in the second half of the movie, however, that did me in ... car chases, explosions, failures of surveillance officers to keep track of whoever they're trailing, and the refusal of Kidman's character to reveal what the cops needed to know ... just didn't jell or make sense.
Probably a good thing the two main characters went their separate ways ... Penn displayed a poignant sense of grief for his dead wife, Kidman hardly changed expression as she went through her brother's papers. The plot badly needed simplification and cleaning up. Too many undeveloped characters as well. In addition, somewhere in the film the moviemakers might have found a way to make us care.
Rating: - Excuse Me While I Fall Asleep....
Long, boring, and incoherent, this is one of those 'global' film experiments that falls flat on its' face. I think Angelina Jolie is the only one that got it right on 'Beyond Borders', but this film takes Aussie Nicole Kidman and places her in the UN, where the poor thing is supposed to convince us that she can speak a variety of languages.
The problem is, Nicole sounds like she's speaking Australian English even when shes speaking Swahili, which obviously isn't a good thing. The high power star cast does nothing to clarify the confusing, meandering plot, and by the time the end comes, you're left wondering why it is you're supposed to care. I had more fun watching the unintentionally hilarious 'Original Sin' starring Antonio Banderas.
This film looks like it wanted an Oscar so badly, that they got the best director, and cinematographer to work on it. In the process, they forgot to concentrate on the script, and Nicole playing a South African who is 'patriotic' really got on my nerves. Why couldn't they cast a black actress in her role if they really cared? It would have made more sense. In the end, we get the feeling that this blonde, blue eyed beauty is some sort of Africa-loving philanthropist, and I didn't buy that.
Next time, they should cast someone really good like Thandie Newton in a role like this, and respect the real crises that Africa is going through, instead of glossing it over and giving us guilt-ridden Caucasians in lead roles that so obviously belong to a black person.
Even Two Stars is generous for this narcissistic mess.
Rating:  - Against Interpretation
Nicole Kidman might have never looked so beautiful as she did playing the haunted UN interpreter Silvia Broome. And Sean Penn has this masculine arrogance that somehow holds her attention long enough for her to forget about her pressing problems concerning Africa. I saw this film again last night on cable TV and it was much more confusing the second time around. Probably should invest in the DVD so I could access the deleted scenes which (maybe) explain everything. There must be deleted scenes like crazy involving Catherine Keener talking to her agent and listening to the agent explain why she really needed to be in this movie, for they might as well have hired Nicole Richie so little acting ability was needed for her brief scenes with Penn. Keener's mumbling, thin lipped accent made Nicole Kidman sound almost human.
Director Sydney Pollack must have felt bells clicking in his head when he glimpsed Nicole Kidman and heard a tape of the various accents she has essayed on screen. Not since Meryl Streep has anyone done so many so promiscously, and it is said that Pollack forcefed Kidman hours worth of tapes of Meryl Streep doing the famous "I had a farm in Africa" opening to OUT OF AFRICA, of which I now consider THE INTERPRETER an unoffical remake. The implication is that Kidman, and her doomed family the Broomes, are the real inheritors of Africa, and that the black revolutions and counterrevolutions that have destroyed the Broomes are hopelessly evil and subhuman. Why, Nicole, why? Maybe you wanted to show you weren't afraid of big issues, but why play an African saint when so many talented black actresses were out there just longing for a big meaty part opposite Sean Penn--and many of them much more able to adopt a whispery Danish slash Dutch accent than you (not to mention playing the flute). Do the DVD scenes tell us why the screenwriters decided to have her play the flute anyhow? Was it just to get her back into the building after hours?
Couldn't she have just forgotten her Metro Card or her purse or something? No, no, it had to be musical--tragically musical. John Garfield spent four months at Juilliard learning to play the piano for HUMORESQUE (1946), but Nicole Kidman learned the flute in under forty-five minutes on the set of MOULIN ROUGE. Ah, the pace of modern filmmaking! No wonder she seems to make even more movies than the stars of the Golden Age Hollywood cinema.
Rating: - surprisingly good
I saw this movie at the end of its run in the movie theaters. My husband & son were not interested but I was intrigued by the reviews I had read so I went by myself. I do not care for gratuitous violence in movies. A really good movie, in the opinion of the men in my life, must have a violent death in the first 60 seconds and 25-30 violent scenes total -- car crashes, murders, blown up buildings, fight scenes. There is violence in this movie but it is not gratuitous and I found the movie much less violent than I expected. An explosion and murders occur but they are the type of violence that would happen if this film was relating a real life African political intrigue. The African political situation at the core of this movie is plausible which is more than can be said about the plots of many other movies. I thought the screen play for this movie was both well written and true to life. (I don't mean to imply implausible is the necessarily the same as bad-- some of the best movies ever are completely implausible.)
Nicole Kidman's character, a UN interpreter who is expert in African dialects, returns to her booth to pick up an item left behind. The UN floor appears to be empty but she inadvertently overhears a conversation about a planned assassination of the current leader of an African nation , a man who is due to make an appearance at the UN. The African nation is the one in which her family lived; she grew up there. She reports the overheard conversation to the FBI. The FBI, especially a grieving agent played by Sean Penn, does not believe her. They investigate her and find in her past life in Africa many reasons to doubt her story. However, they must investigate the planned assassination anyway even if they think it is bogus. It soon becomes clear as unexpected (some violent) events begin to take place surrounding the interpreter that something is going on although the FBI agent played by Sean Penn is unsure whether it is a real African based assassination plot or the interpreter reported the conversation to throw off suspicion from herself for something she is planning. At the same time, he finds himself drawn to her, the first woman who has interested him since the death of his wife. Nicole Kidman brings to her role the sort of class and reserve one would imagine a UN interpreter to possess. I found Sean Penn's tortured FBI agent portrayal sympathetic and very Sean Penn-ish. (I must admit I do not believe FBI agents are really so dishevelled looking. Perhaps I am just assuming as truth that FBI agents are "men in black.")
I enjoyed all of the plot twists (there ARE many) in this story, the unfolding of the mystery behind the overheard conversation, how it relates to the interpreter's past, the rise and fall of leaders in the African nation. This story was more layered than most thrillers (I have seen them; one can't help it with the men in my life). I would not call it a thriller at all, but a political mystery. It's a very good mystery movie and an unusual one. The movie is set in New York City and partially in Africa. The movie addresses political corruption and legal ethics (which crimes might be justifiable, which crimes should be punished). The UN scenes are fascinating to someone (like me) with an interest in world politics. If you have such an interest too, you may enjoy this movie as I did.
BTW on nit-picking reviews: I have noticed some negative reviewers who have nit-picked the movie to justify their thumbs down for it (one review: chess board mistake, "booger" sighting). My husband, too, likes to pick out nits in the movies he did not like. Recently, I have been drawing his attention to the nits in the movies he loves: a little reminder that there are unbelievable situations and errors in his favorite movies too. His attitude is "so what?" I guess we honestly do not mind nits in the movies we like and they loom large and overwhelming in the movies we hate. And then there are the movies that are so bad, no one likes them! Still I would like to see negative reviews that explain more fully why the reviewer did not like the movie. It would be more helpful to amazon customers.
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