This complicated conspiracy thriller about a United Nations interpreter with a political agenda of her own was the first film in 20 years that director Sydney Pollack framed for true widescreen viewing. The irony, however, is The Interpreter suffers from the screenplay equivalent of pan-and-scan: hurried rewrites. The result is a topical, intriguing drama that looks fabulous but is undermined by a choppy, nip 'n' tuck narrative that was still being rewritten when cameras rolled.
Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn star. (Widescreen) Mike Myers has his mojo in overdrive for the third and funniest in the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold franchise. It's also smarter and more inventive than its predecessors, thanks to novel casting (including Caine as Austin's father), inspired pop-culture parodying and extravagant stunts that would do James Bond proud.
The movie peaks too early with an ingenious MI:2 send-up, and too often lapses into the scatological with redundant gutter gags. But it's such a likeable, occasionally even hilarious lampoon that its excesses are easier to overlook than Mini Me. Denzel Washington won an Oscar for this mesmerising, mean-streets thriller, in which he plays a rogue narcotics cop who takes a rookie (Ethan Hawke) under his bent wing and shows him the tricks of the trade on his first day on the job.
A fearsome, suspenseful psychological contest unfolds as the viewer is left wondering whether Washington's vet is irredeemably corrupt or a street justice crusader in the tradition of Dirty Harry.
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