"The Interpreter"

"The truth requires no translation."

I have been in the habit of seeing older movies on Netflix and just watching them for fun. I saw this one yesterday and thought it would be really interesting. Well, I wasn't wrong. The Interpreter, released in 2005 stars, Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. It follows a United Nations interpreter who overhears a plot to assassinate an African president. There were a lot of players in this film and at first, it was a bit confusing but as the film went on I started to understand more of the politics that were happening. There are three people who are trying to be the president of the African country Matobo. The current president Zuwanie who has committed mass genocide and is about to be tried in international criminal court by the U.N. but wants to travel to the U.N. and speak to the general assembly. Another man named Xola is a man who is against Zuwanie and wants peace in his country. The third man is named Kuman-Kuman and he is in the U.S. trying to get more support and show that he is a good replacement for Zuwanie.

I don't want to give too much away about the main character Silvia (Nicole Kidman) because it really ties the whole story together really well. I was actually really surprised by how well all the pieces came together in this one. There are multiple stories that overlap in this film and I think that's what I liked the most about it. I really love thrillers of any kind and it was really refreshing to watch a political thriller like this that wasn't the typical "Washington" type of politics. This film was able to film inside the U.N. buildings which were really interesting to see, I did not know much about the United Nations before watching this. The African country Matobo and the language they speak "Ku" were created for this film. Which was really well done in my opinion. I also was researching some of the information on this film and there have been comparisons to Matobo and Zimbabwe. The parallels are really interesting in my opinion. If you want to watch a different type of political thriller I would suggest this one!

4/5 stars