The Interpreter

The Interpreter begins with a short sequence in Africa. We get the message that there's some bad stuff going down when two people turn up at an abandoned stadium. They're shown a room full of bodies by a few kids who were previously playing soccer with a human head, wrapped in cloth. After they're inevitably gunned down by one of the kids, we zoom to the UN headquarters in New York, where our interpreter Silvia Broome is working on translating a foreign tongue to English. From the fictitious African country of Matobo, and speaking the fabricated language of Coo, Silvia returns to the UN late at night to retrieve some personal possessions. Overhearing a conversation in her native tongue, the audience is briefly kept guessing as to what it is she has heard.

Continuing themes in The Interpreter focus of the question of interpretation. It's the character's job after all. She states that countries have gone to war over people interpreting each other incorrectly - does wanting someone 'gone', really mean that they're wanted 'dead', for example. There's also the link between honesty and integrity. From the very beginning FBI agent Tobin Keller pegs Silvia as a liar. Is she? As an audience, we didn't get subtitles to tell us what the people were talking about that night at the UN building - she could easily be making it up - no one else could know any different. She goes through a polygraph test - with inconclusive results. And slowly, we're shown more and more questionable character history that reveals just the type of person Silvia is, or as she implies, used to be. Who's the bad guy?

Ok, she's the victim right? We're with Silvia as she rides her scooter home, closely followed by a car driven by a rather intense looking individual who seems to want to give her a good scare. Later on at home, she's confronted by a creepy figure at her window wearing one of her masks. It's at this point that agent Keller - who has previously been very solid in his mind of her lacking in credibility - begins to believe her story and invests his time in starting to protect her.

Up until this point not much has really happened in the film outside of talking. A sequence reminiscent of the feel created in The Fugitive, where several players we've been briefly observing throughout the film, all converge on a bus. With FBI trackers in tow, the tension builds up very nicely - perhaps a small sense of saving grace for an otherwise passable film.

The Interpreter is a rather generic thriller. Take away the admittedly impressive location shots of the UN building and you're left with the rather poor sister of The Firm. Unfortunately, the deception and intrigue that fuels The Interpreter's narrative leaves you wanting at the end. The assassination plot that she overhears, reveals itself to be as much as a non-event to the audience, as agent Keller assumed it was a lie in the first place.

The great use of the UN building and a great cast are denied their just presence in The Interpreter from a story that only once ever sends the pulse pumping. There's the promised conspiracy, and while it does leave you guessing as to what the hell is going on, the lead character's switching resolve is just confusing. As a political thriller, The Interpreter should have been smarter and faster. It leaves you wanting for something more, perhaps a feeling that more was at stake. In The Interpreter, little is threatened, and even less is lost. Perhaps that could be interpreted as good police work, but an audience will understand it as a weak attempt to impress them.




out of ten

Reviewed by Paul Boschen

Moviemarshal.com home