The Interpreter (Sean Penn, Nicole Kidman)

6/10. This is not a bad movie, but more of the pass-time type. Nice shots of the UN and some mild US-bashing which is always a good thing.

The movie's name comes from Nicole Kidman's job as a language interpreter at the UN building in New York. Her life gets into high gear when she overhears plans for the killing of the leader of an African nation ("Matobu"), who is about to visit NYC to address the UN. She has been born and brought up in Matobu herself and apparently has a murky past, having been involved in the civil war raging there for years. She manages to pull off a sort of mysterious "white girl brought up in Africa" air with a funky accent which is kinda nice. Anyway, her report on the conversation sparks an FBI investigation with Sean Penn leading the team.

Normally I consider Penn to be a good actor but in this movie he is rather weepy. His story is that he had an adulterous wife who died just two weeks ago in a road accident while scooting around with her latest fling. Penn becomes Nicole's protector, "Bodyguard" style, because the shadowy African conspirators have figured out that they have been overheard. The intense situation that the couple is thrown in generates emotional heat punctuated by lots of weeping because Nicole too suffers a huge loss. As it turns out, both her brother and her former boyfriend have been shot to death in an ambush by Government forces in Matobu. Much to the audience's disappointment, this sort of cools the budding romance and it begins to seem like Penn won't get the yoyo. Further developments occur which I will keep secret in order to be less of a spoiler.

The movie is reasonably slick, but falters a bit near the end. Watch it at the dollar theater.