Home -> Movies -> The Interpreter DVD

Release Date: April 22nd, 2005

Running Time: 1 hr. 58 min.

U.S. Box Office: $72,515,360

Rating: PG-13 for violence, some sexual content and brief strong language.

Director: Sydney Pollack

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener, Jesper Christensen, Yvan Attal

Critics Reviews: 6 out of 10

Chicago Sun-Times For once, the players in a dangerous game are too busy for sex -- too busy staying alive and preventing murder. They do, however, develop an intriguing closeness, based on shared loss and a sympathy for the other person as a human being. There's a moment when she rests her head on his shoulder, and he puts a protectively arm around her, and we admire the movie for being open to those feelings. Roger Ebert

Reelviews The Interpreter is a cut above the average politically-based thriller. Although the events depicted in the film are fictional (as is the country in which some of the action transpires), they bear a more-than-passing resemblance to incidents that have rocked African nations in recent decades. This makes the backstory more credible than what one might otherwise expect. James Berardinelli

The Boston Globe "The Interpreter," a righteous but wrongheaded thriller, chokes on its well-meant outrage and leaves a moth-eaten plot and handful of nonsense characters on its way to a dopey finish. This is a Hollywood potboiler, with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman, about African genocide that's set in and around the real United Nations headquarters. Wesley Morris

San Francisco Chronicle It's hard to know what is more impressive, the artistry of "The Interpreter" or the sheer craft of it. The lead roles are meticulously inhabited by Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn, who play complicated people with lots of sorrow and conflict going on beneath the surface. Mick LaSalle

CNN Sydney Pollack knows his way around a thriller. He's the director who brought us "Three Days of the Condor" and "The Firm," and he's a master at slowly building a sense of dramatic urgency until a shattering breaking point is finally achieved. Paul Clinton

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The Interpreter Official site for Sydney Pollack's political thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.