Starring Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn
Directed by Sidney Pollack

Is it enough to put two highly watchable chemistry-charged actors together in a political conundrum, and hope for the best?

Sidney Pollack has given us some terrific political entertainers in the past like "Out Of Africa" and "Havana". Beyond the powerful plot what is evident in these films is the crackling chemistry between the lead pair. Whether it was Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand in "The Way We Were" or Meryl Streep and Redford in "Out Of Africa", or even Dustin Hoffman and Jessica Lange in "Tootsie", the lead pair in a Pollack creation gives off those special sparks that ignite the life of a film.

In "The Interpreter", the political thriller is more slanted and tangential than usual. Unlike Hitchcock's "Vertigo" or "The Man Who Knew Too Much", the suspense quotient in "The Interpreter" is never shifted according to the narrative's need.

The anxiety level in the script, as an African leader visits the US for what could be a lethal tryst with insurgency, is controlled through the characters rather than plot manoeuvrings.

And what better character control than what Kidman and Penn have to offer. These two Hollywood icons have come up the hard way, building their formidable reputations role by role. The lead pair gives evolved performances that get us more involved in the yarn than we might have otherwise.

Kidman brings a haunted quality to her character of the enigmatic, taciturn woman who, ironically has to deal with words and their relevance all the time. She's especially good at expressing wry tragedy. Watch her when she tells Penn not to shout at her since it confuses her. Such moments are rare in thrillers.

Her barbed, guarded and aggressive exchanges with Penn (who's assigned to protect her after she's threatened by mysterious assailants) could have easily reduced the narrative to yet another take on the damsel and her benefactor's shop-talk.

Sharp words are punctuated by expressions that are so fleeting and yet so piercing that you could miss the point for the politics...Pollack never allows us to miss the point of the politics. To a large extent the credit for this must go to the lead performers.

Pollack doesn't waste time in catfights and street chases. The one critical bus explosion sequence is done in a more cerebral than surreal way. The politics of oppression never gets oppressive. You don't come away with the feeling that you've been taken for a ride. And yet you don't end up watching a cumbersome and ponderous political thriller with a message.

"The Interpreter" makes telling use of the space that the thriller genre allows to politics. It also gives luscious leeway to its lead pair to be 'actors' without losing out on star charisma.

This is a clever film designed to entice viewers into a state of submissive suspense. Finally though, "The Interpreter" isn't clever enough to camouflage its ulterior intentions of creating yet another fable on America's liberal attitude to the Third World.