http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=ee25fa39-2ce5-432f-9c00-ea7eba182773

Steven Edwards
National Post
April 27, 2005

THE UNITED NATIONS -- It is hard to find anyone at the United Nations who
looks like Nicole Kidman, star of The Interpreter, and security isn't as
tight as the script would have you believe.

But the world body is good at giving standing ovations to dictators and
despots. And humourless Sean Penn, Kidman's co-star, is a perfect fit
among the earnest people who roam headquarters here.

So while Sydney Pollack's first movie in six years largely lives up to
Hollywood's reputation for distorting reality, parts of it ring true even
for people familiar with the institution.

Unfortunately for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who allowed filming
on-site for the first time in a bid to lift the world body's sagging
image, some of the believable scenes are also the most embarrassing.

Like the one showing a prime minister from an unnamed country enjoying a
lap dance at a local nightclub after attending the UN's annual summit.

Only last year, a top Bangladeshi diplomat was ordered home after her
husband ran up a US$129,626 bill for a seven-hour session at the Manhattan
strip club Scores.

The UN turned away Alfred Hitchcock when he asked for access to the
delegates' lounge to shoot scenes for his 1959 movie North by Northwest.
Pollock, too, got the cold shoulder when he first sought permission to
shoot here, with one senior UN official declaring, "This is a place of
serious business."

But the director of Out of Africa and Three Days of the Condor personally
appealed to Annan, convincing him the big screen would spice up the UN in
a way deadpan diplomats cannot.

"I told him ... it was a Hollywood thriller with movie stars and guns and
good guys and bad guys and all that stuff," he said in one promotional
interview.

The movie opened as the top-grossing film in North America this past
weekend. Its release comes as most headlines about the UN focus on
scandals the world body is facing, rather than the worthy pursuit of
international justice, as The Interpreter depicts.

Kidman plays the part of Silvia Broome, a General Assembly interpreter,
who believes the UN is the world's only hope for seeing human rights
universally respected.

"You must've had a tough year," says Penn in the role of U.S. Secret
Service agent Tobin Keller.

The pair has a tension-filled relationship as they struggle to unravel a
suspected assassination plot against Edmond Zuwanie, dictator of the
fictional African country of Matobo, which also happens to be the name of
a national park in Zimbabwe, whose real-life president is known for his
ruthlessness.

The movie opens with a scene in which UN security guards discover a metal
detector at the visitors' entrance has been malfunctioning and could have
allowed people to pass armed with guns or explosives.

The discovery calls for drastic measures because the General Assembly is
packed with dignitaries. With lightning speed and breathtaking efficiency,
the entire complex is evacuated.

Compare that with what happened in October, 2002, when an Illinois postal
worker hopped the perimeter fence just metres from a pillbox full of
security guards and started firing a pistol.

As diplomats hit the ground, one bullet pierced the window of the women's
bathroom on the 18th floor and another just missed a UN employee's seat in
the travel office two floors above.

The gunman had finished shooting of his own volition and placed his weapon
on the ground by the time UN guards arrived to handcuff him.

Another early scene in the movie highlights the International Criminal
Court, an actual body the UN launched in The Hague in 2002 to try
war-crimes suspects.

The script gives the impression the tribunal is internationally feared,
and the movie ends with the United States, in its real-life capacity as a
Security Council member, contributing to a unanimous vote to send Zuwanie
to the court to face trial for slaughtering untold numbers of his people.

Too bad the real tribunal has yet to launch a trial of anyone, and that
Washington abhors the institution, arguing it will become a platform for
anti-Americanism like several other UN bodies.

In the film, Kidman's character arrives for work on a motorized scooter, a
notion UN officials scoffed at. "Where would you park it?" asked one,
noting the underground parking lot is reserved for diplomats' limousines.

But there's a reminder of the real Penn in a scene showing his character
blasting away with a pistol. The actor, who is licensed to carry a gun,
used one to shoot at eight paparazzi-laden helicopters hovering over a
friend's Malibu home in 1985 as he and Madonna were trying to exchange
wedding vows.

"I would have been very excited to see one of those helicopters burn and
the bodies inside melt," he reportedly said at the time.

Zuwanie addresses the General Assembly after being driven in a motorcade
through unbelievably clear New York streets. Though he's a dictator, warm
applause greets him as he steps up to the podium. Now that's the UN we all
know.

--- Peter T. Chattaway ------------- http://filmchatblog.blogspot.com/ ---
Nothing tells memories from ordinary moments; only afterwards do they
   claim remembrance, on account of their scars. -- Chris Marker, La Jetee

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