**The Peacemaker** Reviewed by Jeff Walters
Disappointment #2. Well not so much a dissappointment, everyone I'd talked to before hand regarding this movie had made it clear that this was nothing special. But I still was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by 'The Peacemaker' which truth be known was actually made over a year ago but only released recently. Not to be though. Ordinary is the word that pops to mind when I think of this film. Plain ordinary.
The acting is not really worth focusing on much because the two lead characters were so weak and undeveloped. The audience feels no real attachment to Kidman or Clooney's character (particularly Clooney's brain-dead Colonel Thomas Devoe) and the two emotional sequences between the two fizzle badly and seem like carbon copies of each other. The villian was actually not too bad, the writers opted for a little extra originality here by making him an ordinary man with very little fighting skills.
What saves this movie from being an outright stinker is a couple of nifty action sequences that kept the audience involved to a certain degree. The first of these is at the start of the film which involves two trains and some nice camera work. This scene is practically given away in the previews for the movie but is fresh enough so that it sets up a nice tense atmosphere. The special effects for the resulting nuclear explosion that closes the scene is fairly budget, but doesn't looks so cheesy that it ruins the scene.
The best scene is really no contest and appears about two thirds into the film. A trio of helicopters penetrates Russian airspace in an attempt to halt a truck carrying some very dangerous cargo before it can cross the border into Iran. This scene is a real show stopper from start to finish and really grabbed my attention after my mind was starting to drift from the dull and somewhat idiotic earlier parts.
The climax sequence in the streets of New York City is pretty well done and does put you on the edge of your seat to a certain degree when everyone is madly searching for a bomber. This however leads to a fairly dull and predictable confrontation scene that we've all seen before many many times.
Now onto the 'idiotic earlier parts' I mentioned above. What I am referring to here is a lengthy sequence that occurs around 40 minutes into the film. This involves Kidman and Clooney 'interrogating' a trucking executive in his own office and then their following escape. This part was so dumb it defies description. Seriously. Suspension of disbelief, once again, only stretches so far. Devoe's actions in this series of events are simply S T U P I D. Unfortunately stupidity is a common thread throughout The Peacemaker.
The Peacemaker failed at the box office and it's not hard to see why. It's a long time since I've seen weaker chemistry between male and female leads. The movie's saving grace is some exciting action sequences that draw the auidence back in and that's the only way it got 2.5/5 stars in my book. See it if you feel you can survive till the 1 1/4 hour mark when things start to pick up.
2 1/2 stars out of 5
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