The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt

Thrillers don't get much smarter than The Interpreter.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

An elegant adventure of a different kind.

Variety by Todd McCarthy

Coolly absorbing without being pulse-quickening.

Rolling Stone by Peter Travers

The Interpreter bristles with the smart, steadily engrossing tension that marked such 1970s goodies as "All the President's Men," "The Parallax View" and Pollack's own "Three Days of the Condor."

Village Voice by J. Hoberman

The Kidman character is an exotic--and even unlikely--creature, usefully fueling Penn's annoyed but fascinated incredulity.

Time by Richard Corliss

There's enough narrative for three fine films. But not enough for The Interpreter. The thriller pieces feel assembled rather than organic.

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

The Interpreter is long and tangled, the score is yet another drownout from the thundering James Newton Howard, and the avowed thoughtfulness--about sub-Saharan politics, about the clashing commitments to peace and justice, about the kinship of damaged souls--is at once laudable and vaporous.

Empire

Solid, mature and finely acted, but intermittently daft.

L.A. Weekly by Ella Taylor

When it comes to the United Nations, though, the movie turns to Jell-O. Whether Pollack was softened up by his meetings with U.N. brass (all the way up to Kofi Annan), or by his own gentlemanly Midwestern liberalism, he is alarmingly circumspect about that august body.

Dallas Observer by Robert Wilonsky

The Interpreter dashes the suspense by talking the audience to death.