The Interpreter

Herald rating: * * * *

If you've been looking for an old-fashioned political thriller, one you'd be happy recommending to your dad, then this is it.

Directed by Sydney Pollack, who is no newcomer to the political thriller genre (Three Days of the Condor), The Interpreter is a well-written, suspenseful film, concentrating on character as much as it does on action.

With its tone of political paranoia, The Interpreter harks back to political thrillers of the 70s, but is also poignantly placed in the 21st century with its focus on troubled African states, in particular Zimbabwe under Mugabe's rule.

Nicole Kidman is Silvia Broome, an interpreter with the United Nations in New York. Broome was born and raised in the fictional African country of Matobo, whose President Edmond Zuwani was initially a gifted and popular leader, but over the years his dictatorship has grown to be one characterised by human rights abuse and claims of ethnic cleansing.

When Zuwani announces he is coming to justify his actions in front of the General Assembly at the United Nations, Broome accidentally overhears two people whispering in the Ku language of Matobo about a plot to assassinate President Zuwani.

Broome reports what she hears, and US Secret Service agents Tobin Keller (Sean Penn) and his partner Dot Woods (Catherine Keener) are brought in to investigate her claims. Although Broome's life has been marred by terrible violence, she believes in forgiveness and political injustices being addressed in a peaceful way. It soon becomes clear that there are some close to her who don't feel the same way.

We are never quite sure what role Broome might be playing in this assassination plot, and it's a frustrating job for agent Keller, who is dealing with the loss of his wife two weeks earlier in a car crash, to get to the bottom of her past. The two develop a deep bond (which thankfully doesn't turn into the obvious romance) and help each other deal with the grief in their lives.

Shot inside the real United Nations Building in New York, The Interpreter is more concerned with building suspense than filling the screen with action packed scenes, but when the big action moment hits, Pollack takes your breath away.

Occasionally the plot gets a little muddy, the pace of the film feels a little too considered, and the characters too contrived, but watching a film where depth of character is given as much time and thought as the fisticuffs is a joy.CAST: Sean Penn, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Keener
DIRECTOR: Sydney Pollack
RUNNING TIME: 128 mins
RATING: M contains medium-level violence
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts, Rialto and Berkeley cinemas