Movie Review: The Interpreter
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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that the movie includes realistic
representations of shooting deaths (in the first scene,
committed by adolescent boys) and a terrorist bomb attack on a
bus in Brooklyn. The political intrigue is occasionally
complicated, involving discussions of assassination, genocide,
racism, and the desire for revenge. Characters drink, smoke,
and use some mild language (they also name and drink Starbucks
coffee).
Families who see this movie could learn more about the U.N.'s roles in world peacekeeping and diplomacy, as well as recent turmoils in Sudan, Rwanda, or Zimbabwe. Families can also talk about the way that children are affected by daily and traumatic violence. Is vengeance the only or most effective response to violence? How do you know when you can trust a friend or a colleague?
Common Sense Media Review
Sydney Pollack's new thriller is at once topical and
abstract. While its subject matter is immediate (African
genocide, U.S. intelligence agency confusions, personal and
collective traumas), it maintains a certain distance by setting
its political and economic strife in Matobo, a fictional
African nation that resembles Zimbabwe. With a first violent
scene set here (a group of adolescent assassins shoot to death
two men who come to observe a hidden mass grave -- the imagery
is quite explicit).
Following this brutal introduction, U.N. translator Silvia (Nicole Kidman) overhears an assassination threat when she's in the U.N.'s Manhattan headquarters after hours (Pollack received unprecedented permission to shoot in the building on weekends). Authorities are suspicious of Silvia's report, so they bring in Secret Service agents Keller (Sean Penn) and Woods (Catherine Keener): he's somber and restrained (Penn is excellent), grieving over a dead, estranged wife, and she's an amiably dry sidekick (Woods curtly tells a lap dancer in a strip club not to "touch the prime minister," whom she's guarding at the beginning of the film).
As Keller feels drawn to Silvia, her story becomes more complicated, involving more dead bodies, specifically, genocide in her homeland and murders and terrorism plotted by associates of the Matoban dictator Zuwanie (Earl Cameron). Though Silvia has her own grudge against Zuwanie (having to do with dead family members), she tries to convince Keller that her interest in only incidental.
THE INTERPRETER keeps multiple intrigue balls in the air, as Zuwanie plans an address at the U.N. (an effort to cajole the West/U.S., to maintain power), and Silvia is put under surveillance by the cops, the FBI, Zuwanie's security detail, and the apparent assassins. Keller discovers Silvia's past participation in rebel activities, and she seems related to a bomb on a bus in Crown Heights (the explosion and aftermath are harrowing).
The script (credited to Charles Randolph, Scott Frank, and Steven Zaillian) alternates between preposterous and poetic (some of Penn and Kidman's exchanges are lovely), and leans heavily on coincidence. It's also troubling that Silvia's individual trauma tends to displace the genocide in Africa, a life-and-death issue that is slowly gaining more media attention, in fiction and other forms. That a white woman bears the visible burden of this violent history, however, obscures the high costs for black Africans, a conventional strategy to attract "mainstream" (white) viewers.
Families who enjoy this movie might also like The Manchurian Candidate (1962 and 2004, both dealing with assassination), Hotel Rwanda (which also considers genocide), David Mamet's cunning spy saga Spartan, Pollack's own political thriller Three Days of the Condor, or classic thrillers like Hitchcock's North by Northwest or Costa-Gavras' excellent Z.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
