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The Interpreter

Release Date: April 15th 2005
Distributor: UIP
Certificate: 12A
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Doug Aguirre
Director: Sydney Pollack
Running Time: TBC

This political thriller stars the wonderful Nicole Kidman in the starring Role. Kidman plays Silvia Broome, an African-born interpreter working at the United Nations building in New York. When Silvia overhears what she believes to be a death threat against an African head of state, she becomes involved in an investigation by the US secret service in to the assassination plot. But she is immediately pulled in to the spotlight as their first suspect – the problem being, they don’t believe her, believing instead that she is merely seeking attention. However, she soon realises she is in much more danger than she originally realised, as she seems to have become the target of the assassins as well.


Suspecting that she may be being used as bait, Silvia sets out to both prove her innocence and protect the targeted head of state herself. But can she stay alive long enough to get somebody to believe her?

Sean Penn plays Tobin Keller, the US agent assigned to protect Broome. Silvia and Tobin, by their very nature, see life from very different points of view – one, a US interpreter, believes in the power of words; the other, an agent for the secret service, believes in reading between the lines. It is this power-play between the two characters that makes the story so interesting and intense.

Directed by Sydney Pollack, the Interpreter is the first movie to be shot in the actual United Nations building. The crew worked entirely at the weekend so as not to disrupt the daily goings-on at the international centre, but their commitment to detail results in an amazing look and feel to the UN scenes that would surely not have been achieved on a set. The rest of the movie is set mainly in New York (part of the deal Mayor Bloomberg’s office struck that allowed them to film in the UN building) and has a pace and speed that matches any of the classic political thrillers. Kidman and Penn are superb in their roles, with Keener also excelling as Penn’s secret service partner.
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