The Interpreter

Everything was great about this movie until the director (Sydney Pollack) pulled everything to a grinding halt so that he could basically sit down and chat with the audience about the message of the story.

The story sets up well--Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) inadvertently overhears a plot to assisinate the dictator of Matobo (fictional African country), while Secret Service agent Tobin Keller (Sean Penn) tries to simultaneously protect her and unravel the conspiracy. It was all quite interesting, because Tobin's suspicion of Silvia is shared by the audience, so we waver between believing her and suspecting that she is perhaps part of the plot to kill Zuwanie (the dictator). The conspiracy itself is good, and it's not hard to follow as Tobin progressively works out the details while the story unfolds. As we learn more about the conspiracy surrounded by the political situation in Matobo, we also discover more about Silvia's links to the country as well as her character's motivations.

Things progressed well, we had thrilling scenes which were then wrapped up neatly with another puzzle piece while still leaving much unsolved. The viewer is drawn into the story and is eventually on the edge of his/her seat as everything comes to a head. But then, almost as if the director couldn't decide what to do with Silvia's character during the climax of the story, he sort of shoves her into a long, drawn out scene that only serves to bash the viewer repeatedly with the message. Furthermore, the whole exchange is completely inconsistent with what Silvia's character represented the whole damn time! They could have removed this particular scene from the movie entirely without any loss of plot, not to mention interest. Instead, by the time the movie ended, I was feeling much less enthusiastic about it. Kind of a shame, really.

It's not a bad thing to have a message, and it's not even that horrible to spell said message out for the audience. But it's another thing entirely to destroy all credibility by throwing in some extremely boring extraneous scene that doesn't even fit with the characters or the tone of the film. I almost felt like I was in Political Ethics 101, listening to the professor drone endlessly about the same stupid theme.

The Interpreter is still a decent movie overall, so it all depends on how much you want to spend to see it. I probably would have preferred to wait a few months and spend $3.50 at Blockbuster.