The Interpreter (DVD)

With old Sydney Pollack at the making you can expect three things (which you will get): a perfect mastery of the directing, a good performance from the actors (not brilliant though), and an annoying feeling of fuddy-duddiness floating all the way through.

It’s a film about terrorism, political maneuvering and revolutionary ideologies. And if you’re interested in those, the film is an attractive and vivid chronicle. But if we’re talking cinema… There’s very little action, even less suspense, and no thrills. The romance between Penn and Kidman is hardly credible: the meeting of two broken lives, who constantly argue, barely manage to help each other along the way, and fall through at the end! (They don’t even kiss! It’s like your grand-grand-grand-parents having an affair!) Near the ending the film seems to catch up, and you start to relish on a thrilling final action, but you won’t even get that. And you will soon flop back into your armchair thinking, Oh no my God it’s not going to end just like that…? Yes it is.

To sum it up: good directing, poor story.