Looking at a new high-tech action extravaganza like “The Peacemaker,” you may start to wonder if contemporary movies and television haven’t shoved audiences into near-megalomania. Switching from channel to channel, hopping from one world crisis, catastrophe, local scandal, car chase, glitzy commercial or talk show to the next may be giving us the delusional sense that we can master the world as easily as we surf channels. Or that the world itself is as big, bright, explosive, disjointed and irrational as it appears to be on TV.
That occurred to me as I watched “The Peacemaker,” another overblown, high-tech political adventure movie in the “Air Force One”-“Crimson Tide”-“Clear and Present Danger” mode. It’s a classy example of the genre and the first big production from the new Steven Spielberg-Jeffrey Katzenberg-David Geffen company, DreamWorks. And like those other movies, “Peacemaker” probably will be a box-office hit.
But, also like many of its predecessors, “Peacemaker” moves so fast, sets off so many explosions and makes so little real sense that watching it becomes dizzying and nerve-grating.
The movie — which stars George Clooney and Nicole Kidman and is directed by “E.R.” helmer, Mimi Leder — has a provocative subject and a complex story (an original by “Crimson Tide” scripter Michael Schiffer). It’s about the theft of Russian nuclear devices: warheads, stolen from a troop train by rogue Russian Gen. Kodoroff (Alexander Baluev) and then smuggled toward the borders, with buyers apparently waiting in both Iran and Bosnia.
Kidman and Clooney play the latest style in high-tech action buddy-lovers. Kidman is brainy Dr. Julia Kelly of the special White House Nuclear Smuggling Group and Clooney is brash, hot-tempered Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe of Special Forces Intelligence. They’re sexy, bantering bomb-and-terrorism experts. And they have time enough (barely) to flirt with each other as they race to save the world from nuclear catastrophe.
She’s learned and low-key. He’s a gung-ho adventurer. He blows his top and beats people up. She’s the diplomat. They meet cute in a White House strategy session, after the robbery of the warheads and the destruction of the train that had been carrying them. And together they track the culprits, Kodoroff and his bad guys, through Russia in a series of car and helicopter chases, finally swooping down with a mass of snipers and police on poor New York City, the target of the last warhead. In that frantic climactic sequence, Dusan Gavrich (Marcel Iures), a Bosnian diplomat distraught at the death of his family, is carrying the bomb to a deadly rendezvous at the U.N. headquarters because he wants to make a statement about U.N. peacemakers — by blowing to bits much of the city and millions of people.
You may wonder why these sexy Yanks are in charge of an investigation taking place in Russia — especially when they have to violate Russian air space and risk getting helicopters shot down to track the smugglers.
But, as in most high-tech action movies, it’s useless to ask questions. Every time you try to sort things out in “The Peacemaker,” there’s a ticking bomb or a truck falling off a bridge to divert your attention. “The Peacemaker” makes sense only if you can believe that the world’s most serious military problems can be solved by a photogenic guy and girl running around both hemispheres in a frenzy, shooting everything up, wisecracking and finally descending on Manhattan to catch the sad-eyed Bosnian bomber.
“The Peacemaker” boasts three incredibly exciting action scenes. No. 1: A slam-bang car chase with Devoe in an armored Mercedes-Benz ramming or crashing over three pursuing BMWs. No. 2: A helicopter pursuit of the smugglers, which ends with a genuine cliffhanger (or bridgehanger). No. 3: That final Manhattan ending once again, with red numbers flashing the bomb’s countdown and a desperate decision over which wire to snip.
Those three scenes are worth the price of the movie, but the connective tissue between them is the usual frenetic montage of racing cars, computer screens and suited guys in a crisis barking orders. Even so, director Leder, who cut her teeth on TV’s “E.R.” and “China Beach,” does a decent job here. The movie doesn’t have much visual style — though Leder has a likable fondness for long takes and tracking shoots that cruise through all the hubbub. She dedicates the film to her father, Paul Leder (the director of “I Dismember Mama” and “Vultures in Paradise”), who died during the filming.
The cast is good, but they’re all in low gear. Clooney and Kidman are cute; Iures is sad and fanatical. But that genius actor Armin Mueller-Stahl is wasted as Vertikoff, an avuncular Russian general and drinking buddy of Devoe’s.
As DreamWorks’ first production, “The Peacemaker” fills the bill. Nobody who swallowed “Air Force One” will find anything to burp at here. And it’s clear that Spielberg and company are trying to give us a progressive variation on the usual high-tech cliches. The director and one of the good guys are both women, and the story makes obvious statements about the danger of loose nukes and the horror of Bosnia.
But those messages aren’t the point. Audiences may not even worry about the real-life loose nukes (a hundred or so) floating around the world right now, as long as they know there are dynamic duos like Clooney and Kidman ready to zap bad guys everywhere. And high-tech fans may not believe a bomb can actually blow up New York City until they see it on TV.
”THE PEACEMAKER”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Mimi Leder; written by Michael Schiffer; photographed by Dietrich Lohmann; edited by David Rosenbloom; production designed by Leslie Dilley; music by Hans Zimmer; produced by Walter Parkes and Branko Lustig. A DreamWorks Pictures release; opens Friday. Running time: 2:02. MPAA rating: R. Language, sensuality, nudity, violence.
THE CAST
Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe ……….. George Clooney
Dr. Julia Kelly …………….. Nicole Kidman
Gen. Dimitri Vertikoff ………. Armin Mueller-Stahl
Dusan Gavrich ………………. Marcel Iures
Cpl. Beach …………………. Michael Boatman
Gen. Kodoroff ………………. Alexander Baluev
