It's not hard, at least for a European, to agree with the message of this movie: America mustn't go it alone; it must not reject the United Nations; it must recognise the International Court of Justice in The Hague. But the weightiness of the content is an uneasy fit with the who's-gonna-do-it format, resulting in a soggy, saggy event. For one thing the back story of Penn's character is too convenient to be believable, and the actor is given far too much screen-time to indulge it. Kidman's character is more enigmatic, which is good, and her journey to the denouement is intriguing, but once there the whole thing slows down to accommodate her star-status. The pacy climax of a forties' B-picture would have been more effective. All the same, there are a couple of high-class thriller sequences which point to the excellent entertainment this could have been had Pollack and co been less determined to hammer the message home.
Review of The Interpreter
