Best movie of this year hands down!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Brilliant and touching

a good movie. against its script. as result of smart work of Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. and for a splendid idea who has not the right adaptation. at the first sigh, it has each ingredient to be a great film. politics, crime, love affair, shadows of guilty, ambiguous relationship, a place who could be used in many brilliant ways. and a great director. but, scene by scene, the impression remains the same - something missing. something important who is necessary to give coherence to a story who must be seductive in each detail. the good thing is the art of actors to complete the mistakes of text. but theirs fight is the perfect mirror for discover the spirit of improvisation behind the scenes.

I thought Nicole Kidman as an interpreter of some African language isn't believable at all and i couldn't get over it. The film itself is fine but making wrong casting choices can prove to be crucial for the credibility of the entire film. It's obvious that Kidman's much more believable as some upper-class housewife character than as the character who had lived and grown up in Africa.The usual pattern in Hollywood films is that the main character becomes a super hero and somehow fights against the evil. This time it's no different at all and the film may seem quite unsurprising as many events can be expected to take place.In my opinion this film isn't among Pollack's best movies mainly due to wrong casting choice. It's still watchable if you don't expect to see a masterpiece.

Not quite an eight: the script was not good enough. No one said anything memorable, for example. And the couple did not make out, although they should have. However, the point of this movie is that Nicole Kidman (playing the title role) is gorgeous. She's tall, has a good rack (even if padded) and a lovely, sensitive face. In this picture she has tons of back story involving family tragedy, rebellion, diplomacy and so forth, and she conveys the load in a restrained way that only makes her more sexy. Of course, her counterpart, Sean Penn (playing the Secret Service agent) is absurd: for a start he is almost a foot shorter in stature, and his face crumples so predictably under the weight of his own shattering back story (his unfaithful wife died a few weeks ago in a car crash). But they work quite well together, particularly when he confronts her at the end and gets her to disarm, although it is her own decision ultimately. They meet afterwards to resolve the question of her guilt, not to kiss. Altogether a decent, civilised film for grown-ups, although the reputed budget of $80 million again seems absolutely outrageous. Surely one-tenth of that would have sufficed!

The basic story has Nicole Kidman as an interpreter at the UN who accidentally overhears a conversation in which there's a threat to kill a tyrannical African dictator when he visits the UN in the near future. This presumably puts Silvia (the interpreter) at risk, as she's now targeted by those plotting to assassinate the guy. The problem is that, aside from a couple of scenes, I never really got sense of her being at risk. This really turned into a long, drawn-out disappointment - completely lacking in excitement, filled with ridiculous plot points and with a convoluted script that I guess is supposed to give you reason to doubt Silvia and to have some uncertainty as to what's going to happen. Unfortunately, there was really no surprise about the ending. It was the definition of an anti-climax, and the fact that (at the very end) Silvia was simply freed (albeit awaiting being deported) after pointing a gun to the head of the African dictator (no matter how ruthless he is?) Well, that's one of those ridiculous plot points. The story is lacking - it lacks both logic and punch. There was nothing here to draw me in and to make me care, although the handful of opening scenes, set in Africa and making clear the nature of the regime in question, tried hard to do that.Story aside (although it's a very big aside when the story's weak) Kidman and her co-star Sean Penn (as Secret Service agent Tobin Keller) tried hard. Their performances were fine. There's nothing much to criticize about them. I thought the backstory about Keller's personal life and recent tragedy was a little extraneous. I will say that I did appreciate that, while Silvia and Keller obviously develop an emotional bond as the movie progresses, there was no effort to include a romance between them. That would have been just too cliché.If anything, the various twists and turns in the story almost make it seem that someone was trying too hard to craft a political thriller - so hard that they forgot to include the thrills! (3/10)