The Interpreter

The Interpreter is an action thriller set in the world of politics. World Politics that is, as the story occurs in the United Nations which for the first time ever allowed a movie to be filmed in the actual building, and director Sydney Pollack took advantage of it and made a movie that felt very real, and that by adding the excellent performances by Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman, was really good.

Kidman plays Silvia Broome, an American born English translator working for the United Nations. She used to live in Africa and was part of a revolutionary group against Zuwanie, the President of Matobo. This is a country made up for the movie so there wouldn't be real political problems but this doesn't really affects the story.
It turns out President Zuwanie is being accused of genocide in his country so he plans to come to the United States (though the U.N. building is actually international territory) and speak in front of the U.N. to cool things off.
One night Silvia goes at night to the U.N. to pick up some stuff she had left behind and overhears a conversation in Ku, one of the dialects spoken in Matobo. There's a plot against President Zuwanie to kill him when he comes to the U.N. in a few days, so she goes to the police to tell them, and then the intrigue begins as Secret Service agents Tobin Keller (Penn) and Dot Woods (Katherine Keener) must find out if she's telling the truth or not, as they learn why Silvia was in that revolutionary group when she was in Africa, and may want the death of President Zuwanie too. At the same time, they must do everything in their power using everything they want (CIA, FBI and whatever other agencies they want) to protect President Zuwanie when he comes in case she's not lying.

Sydney Pollack has done some great movies (like Out of Africa or The Firm, one of my favorites) and also some pretty bad ones (like his previous one, Random Hearts), and I'm happy to say this one is really good, but the ending disappoints and plain sucks, but more about that later.
As mentioned before, he uses the United Nations' building perfectly showing us almost every inch of it and how it all works, and it gave the movie a great sense of realism. Again, this is all up until the ending but before that the U.N. gave the movie a great cinematography.
There's also a great deal of scenes with cameras very close to the actor's faces and it really works as both Kidman and Penn put some very strong performances. Kidman had a really great SouthAfrican accent too, and some awesome crying scenes. Penn has the devastated type of character all worked out by now and he's the one working actor that probably does it the best these days.
Catherine Keener was also pretty good but her part was too small. And she was good because she's such a great actress, because the character itself was pretty useless to the story even though a few times it seemed like she liked Penn's character and something could happen but then nothing else ever happened related to that. Having someone like Catherine Keener in that role was a huge waste of talent.
The best scene of the movie happens in a bus around the first hour of the movie. We have several principal characters all doing different and separated stuff and out of nowhere they all end up together for a very tense and thrilling climax to the scene. It was just perfect.

Now the ending, and there are very HEAVY SPOILERS ahead so be warned.
This killed me, it was all explained but it just brutalized the entire movie. I just don't understand how can they forget about all the excellent security stuff they showed about the United Nations and overall about diplomacy and the Law.
Kidman just appearing out of nowhere in what is supposedly the most secure room in the building is a joke. And then, after she pointed a gun to a President's head, she's let go without charges? Another joke. And I don't understand what they tried to explain at the end with her final words about being sent back home but it didn't sound like she was going to prison for life. And this movie should've ended either with that, or with her killing herself after killing the President. The killing of the President of course didn't happen either and what he was doing there was another joke.

So yes, the last 15 or 20 minutes are horrible and the movie loses all its credibility, but everything before that is really good, with strong acting from everybody (even director Sydney Pollack pops up every now and then as Penn's boss), and there also great camera work and an awesome score. Worth a shot in my opinion as it will keep people glued to the screen for 2 hours, and then yelling at it at the end, but at least it gives you something to talk about.