BEFORE: It's July 4 when I'm posting this, but I'm writing this entry in the early hours of Saturday, June 27. I don't like to mess with my own timestream like this, because the whole point of this blog is to watch films in a particular order, and perhaps gain insight by watching THIS one right after THAT one, and so on. But I messed with things last year with regards to the Marvel movies like "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", "X-Men: Days of Future Past" and "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" - I watched each one as they were released and posted all three reviews in the days leading up to San Diego Comic-Con. So I allow myself to, occasionally, watch things slightly out of order to get my films to line up with the calendar.
This year, I won't be at home on July 4, but the chain I've devised gave me the opportunity to watch this film as a patriotic tie-in, and if I've planned things correctly, it will fall right between two other Nicole Kidman films. OK, so it's a solid plan. Next problem - how to view it? I've been waiting a long while for some cable channel (without commercials) to run this one, but none of them seen interested. It's been on my "secondary watchlist" for some time - that's my list of films that are not in my collection, but I would like them to be at some point. While my main watchlist is stuck at 145 films, I've managed to get my secondary watchlist down to just over 50 films - and some of those I've already seen, like three Marx Brothers films I viewed online to complete that chain, and as soon as TCM runs them again, I'll burn them to DVD and remove them from the secondary watchlist. Otherwise, the secondary watchlist helps me keep track of films from 2014 that haven't aired yet, so I can watch for them in the onscreen listings.
Also, I'd love to pair "The Interpreter", which I watched in March, with this film on a DVD - two films about international politics starring Nicole Kidman - if only some channel would run it. I've given up trying to figure why some movies air on the premium channels, and some don't. My father used to say that if you wait long enough, every movie will be on TV - and he said this back in the 1970's, mainly as an excuse not to take me to the movies as often as I wanted to go. But considering how long I've been waiting for some films to air, I'm not always sure that his maxim is correct - at least if I want to get a clear copy without ads (preferably from a channel that doesn't cover up the end credits of a movie with promos about what's coming up next that fill, like, HALF the screen. I'm calling you out, Encore.)
Look, I get that these things go in cycles. A premium channel like HBO or Showtime is only interested in certain films, each channel has an audience they're trying to please, but don't they understand I've got an ongoing quest to see every movie that I "should"? And I understand that if I want to see a recent film like "The Theory of Everything" or "Interstellar" that I've got to wait until it's out on DVD for a while, and then finishes a run on PPV or VOD. But 1997's "The Peacemaker" is a great example of what I've come to call a "forgotten" film. It maybe had a solid run a few years ago, after which it disappeared from the airwaves. I'm watching the film on Amazon Prime for free, on my wife's account, because I haven't found any other way to do so. Maybe I should be transitioning to watching more films online, but damn it, I'm paying for premium cable, why can't the combination of channels I'm paying for give me access to every film I want to watch, over the course of, let's say, 3 or 4 years? I don't need everything now, just keep things constantly rotating so that eventually all the films of interest will air over time.
I have made great strides on reducing the secondary watchlist, though - I identified 28 releases from 2014 that I didn't want to miss, and I've already crossed 13 of them off. Plus in the past 6 months I've also gotten copies of several earlier films that I've been waiting for, like "The Artist", "Little Children", "Olympus Has Fallen" and "The People vs. George Lucas". But what about all of the others, like "Casa de Mi Padre", or some festival favorites I have on VHS like "Scotland, PA", "Regeneration" or "The Young Poisoner's Handbook"? What about the 1972 version of "Sleuth", or the remake of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" with Jack Nicholson?
Is there something wrong with these films? Is there something wrong with "The Peacemaker"? I don't know, because again, I haven't seen it yet. And now my guard is going to be up, trying to determine if there's some reason that it fell out of favor, or some problem where the action's just a bit too ridiculous, or some mention of a political policy that no longer exists, I don't know exactly. Or maybe because one channel is currently running "The Interpreter", there's only room for one Nicole Kidman political action thriller on the airwaves at a time?
THE PLOT: A US Army colonel and a civilian woman supervising him must track down stolen Russian nuclear weapons before they're used by terrorists.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Interpreter" (Movie #2,019), "Syriana" (Movie #2,043)
AFTER: For the most part, I don't have any real problems with this one. Perhaps it's a bit by-the-numbers as two people with different backgrounds are forced to work together to track and contain stolen warheads, but there's nothing patently ridiculous about it, unless you count the last few minutes, which are riddled with Hollywood clichés. But 95% of a solid storyline should count for something, right?
If anything, this film was ahead of its time. Released in 1997, 4 years before terrorism hit NYC for real, before we ever had a Department of Homeland Security or the TSA or the Patriot Act. And I'm sure it got a lot of things wrong (the threat comes from Muslim Croatia, not Al-Qaeda) but I think it also got a lot of things right - like the threat of Russia decommissioning its nuclear program and selling missiles off to the highest bidders.
Clooney is in full-on superhero mode here, rappeling from helicopters and jumping over cars stuck in New York traffic - and the way he handles the car chase in Vienna is just spectacular. By contrast, Kidman's job as the nuclear bomb expert seems to involve a lot of looking concerned/confused between barking out orders. It may be worth noting that her character is a civilian, yet somehow gets thrust into the military's pecking order and manages to keep up. (Admittedly, the casting of Kidman as a nuclear expert is a bit suspect, it sort of calls to mind Denise Richards appearing in a James Bond film as a scientist...)
That's it, the end of my complaints, other than the above this seemed like a serviceable action thriller, and I've got just one NITPICK POINT - because I tend to recognize the architecture and street scenes of New York City, there was a character near the end heading to the U.N. on foot, and he was clearly walking north on 5th Avenue, past Rockefeller Center, which would put him between 49th St. and 50th St. - you can see the statue of Atlas across the street. He then gets into a cab, and when he gets out of the cab, he's approaching the U.N. on 46th St. and 1st Ave. from the north. Why was he shown walking north on Fifth, when he should have been walking south and east to get to the U.N.? There's no place his hotel could have been that would have forced him to walk in the wrong direction to get there. Now, maybe he doesn't know NYC very well and was confused, and when he realized he had no sense of direction maybe he hopped into the cab at 5th and 52nd, and the cab took him east to 2nd Ave, forcing him to walk south. But still, this seems unlikely.
I thought the architecture of the JFK airport building looked familiar - it turns out that wasn't filmed at an airport at all, they shot those scenes at the Javits Convention Center, which I know very well because the NY Comic-Con is held there. I thought maybe there's a building at JFK that looks similar, but nope, that was the crystal Borg hypercube interior of the Javits.
Also starring George Clooney (last seen in "The Monuments Men"), Marcel Iures, Aleksandr Baluev, Armin Mueller-Stahl (last seen in "Jakob the Liar"), Holt McCallany, Michael Boatman, with cameos from Goran Visnjic (also carrying over from "Practical Magic"), Tamara Tunie (last seen in "Flight"), Terry Serpico (last seen in "The Interpreter").
RATING: 6 out of 10 laps in the pool
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