The Peacemaker is a 1997 American political action thriller film starring George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Marcel Iureș and Aleksandr Baluev and directed by Mimi Leder. It is the first film by DreamWorks Pictures. While the story takes place all over the world, it was shot primarily in Slovakia with some sequences filmed in New York City and Philadelphia.[2]
| The Peacemaker | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Mimi Leder |
| Screenplay by | Michael Schiffer |
| Based on | One Point Safe by Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Redlich Cockburn |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Dietrich Lohmann |
| Edited by | David Rosenbloom |
| Music by | Hans Zimmer |
| Distributed by | DreamWorks Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 124 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Languages |
|
| Budget | $50 million[1] |
| Box office | $110.4 million[1] |
The basis for the film was the 1997 book One Point Safe by Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, about the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal.[3]
Plot
editOutside a church celebrating an Eastern Orthodox baptism in Pale, Bosnia, the Bosnian Finance Minister, a moderate pushing for peace in the ongoing Yugoslav Wars, is murdered.
At a missile base in Kartaly (Chelyabinsk Oblast), Russia, ten nuclear warheads that belong to a SS-18 Satan ICBM are loaded onto a train for transport to a dismantling facility. However, Russian Army General Aleksandr Kodoroff, along with a rogue Spetznaz unit, kills the soldiers on board and transfers nine warheads to another train.
Kodoroff then activates the timer on the remaining warhead and sends the transport on a collision course with a passenger train. The 500-kiloton warhead eventually detonates, killing thousands of civilians and delaying an investigation of the accident.
The detonation attracts the attention of the US government. Dr. Julia Kelly, head of the NSC Nuclear Smuggling Group, believes that Chechen terrorists are behind the incident.
Former US Army Ranger and Special Forces turned Military Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe interrupts her briefing to suggest that the incident was staged to hide the hijacking of the warheads. A call to Devoe's friend and Russian counterpart, FSB Colonel Dimitri Vertikoff, adds reliability to his theory, and he is assigned as Kelly's military liaison.
Kelly and Devoe secure information about the terrorists' hijacking operation through an Austrian trucking company that works as a front for the Russian Mafia. They meet Vertikoff in Vienna and assume identities to visit Shummaker, who organizes the Russian trucking.
After Devoe tortures Shummaker for information, he and Kelly leave the building and get in Vertikoff's car. They are chased by Shumaker's men, who kill Vertikoff while he is offering a bribe. Devoe shoots at the attackers and drives away but finds he and Kelly are being followed. Another chase ensues, followed by a crash, but Devoe and Kelly escape.
Information from the trucking company says that the nukes are going to Iran via Azerbaijan. When US spy satellites place the truck in a traffic jam of refugees in Dagestan, Devoe uses a ruse to identify it. This information is passed on to Russian authorities, hoping to stop the transfer to Iran. The Russian military stops Kodoroff at a roadblock, but he and his men kill the soldiers.
Devoe leads an airborne Special Operations team from a U.S. base in Turkey to stop them. Denied entry into Russian airspace, one of the three Special Ops helicopters is shot down by a Russian missile, but the remaining two manage to locate Kodoroff's truck. Firing missiles which disable Kodoroff's truck, they then engage in a gunfight, killing Kodoroff and securing the warheads. However, interrogation of the group's surviving member, a U.S.-educated Pakistani nuclear scientist, reveals that one warhead had been sent off with an operative before the truck was intercepted.
The information from the trucking company leads IFOR to a Sarajevo address. Inside is a video cassette of Dušan Gavrić, a Bosnian who disclaims allegiance to any particular faction in the Yugoslav Wars, but blames other countries for supplying weapons to all sides in the conflict. Kelly's further analysis of the trucking company documents suggests that Gavrić intends to bomb a meeting at the UN headquarters in NYC. Gavrić arrives in Manhattan with the Bosnian diplomatic delegation, having replaced the murdered Finance Minister.
Gavrić actually wants to avenge the death of his wife and daughter, who died in Sarajevo during a sniper attack. He and his brother are later found by Devoe and Kelly. When his brother is killed by Devoe, a wounded and enraged Gavrić flees into a parochial school. Devoe and Kelly confront Gavrić, who commits suicide, knowing that the bomb is set to go off in minutes.
With only seconds to spare, Dr. Kelly manages to remove part of the bomb's explosive lens shell and stop the primary explosion from establishing critical mass within the plutonium core. The primary explosives detonate, wrecking the church, as Devoe and Kelly dive out of a window. However, Kelly's efforts prevent it from causing a nuclear explosion.
Kelly later is seen swimming laps in a pool. Devoe stops by and asks her out for a drink, which she accepts.
Cast
edit- George Clooney as Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe
- Nicole Kidman as Dr. Julia Kelly
- Marcel Iureș as Dusan Gavrich (phonetic of "Dušan Gavrić")
- Aleksandr Baluev as Russian Army General Aleksandr Kodoroff
- Rene Medvešek as Vlado Mirich (phonetic of "Mirić")
- Gary Werntz as Hamilton
- Randall Batinkoff as Ken
- Jim Haynie as General Garnett
- Alexander Strobele as Shummaker
- Holt McCallany as Appleton
- Michael Boatman as CPN Beach
- Joan Copeland as Senator Bevens
- Carlos Gomez as Santiago
- Armin Mueller-Stahl as Russian Federal Security Service Colonel Dimitri Vertikoff
- Bruce MacVittie as DOE Helo Tech
- Harsh Nayyar as Doctor Taraki
Production
editThe Peacemaker is inspired by an unpublished Vanity Fair article written by journalists Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Redlich Cockburn.[4] The film marked the inaugural release from DreamWorks Pictures.[4] George Clooney had initially been set to do a Green Hornet movie at Universal Pictures starring alongside Jason Scott Lee with Sam Raimi directing, but as DreamWorks' co-founder Steven Spielberg's other company Amblin Television produced ER, Clooney opted to sign on for The Peacemaker.[4]
In retrospect, Director Mimi Leder said: “I wish they would make more movies like that," she admits wistfully. "And I would make them because that's what I'm interested in! It was a very exciting experience to be able to keep The Peacemaker grounded in the real world. We actually shot the New York chase sequences first, and we were working at such a high level. We were like, 'Is it too big?' But you can't be too big in a chase where you're trying to save the world from a nuke!"[5]
Release
editBox office
editThe Peacemaker earned $41,263,140 in the US and $69,200,000 elsewhere, bringing its total to $110,463,140.[1]
Critical reception
editOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 46% of 37 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6/10.[6] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 43 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[7] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[8]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times gave praise to Clooney and Kidman for portraying a "charming rogue" and expressing "womanly professionalism as fierce, hostile sternness" in their respective roles and Leder's direction of the movie's action setpieces, highlighting the Manhattan climax for having "crisp economy and furious energy" throughout the scene.[9] Marc Savlov of The Austin Chronicle said that despite the "ever-present plot holes and isoscelean character arcs" throughout the film's story and villains, he praised Leder's directorial skills for keeping things fresh throughout the runtime and adding "clever swagger" to the action scenes, concluding that: "By no means an embarrassment to the fledgling DreamWorks, The Peacemaker is instead a grand, noisy step in the right direction. What next, indeed?"[10] Roger Ebert commended the "technical credits" and both Clooney and Kidman for expertly fulfilling their roles but felt the rest of the film was filled with "retreaded" and "off-the-shelf" thriller clichés and concluded with a bomb defusal third act that lacked the "real endings involving character developments and surprises" found in similar films like The Edge and Kiss the Girls.[11] Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave the film an overall "C+" grade, giving Leder's direction credit for staging her scenes with "crisp exactitude, [and with] a pleasing flair for "rhythmic" visual detail" and adding "elegant and accomplished" atmospherics, but felt that it amounts to being "a well-crafted, utterly generic genre piece" that carries "an air of self-important solemnity that borders on the overblown", concluding that: "In The Peacemaker, nothing escapes the taint of cliche. As the inaugural feature from DreamWorks, the picture is vaguely depressing, because it suggests that the studio’s creators are working so laboriously to manufacture a hit that they’ve forgotten to put in the dream."[12] James Berardinelli criticized the over-long runtime of the movie's "paper-thin plot", the "lack of creativity" in the death scenes and failing to sympathize with the villains' plight, concluding that: "The Peacemaker isn't much better or worse than the average James Bond movie, except, of course, that it doesn't have the cars, the gadgets, the girls, or Bond himself. There's a certain appeal to the premise, but the execution is uneven. The movie is likely to keep an audience's attention, but it's the kind of film that is quickly forgotten."[13]
References
edit- ^ a b c "The Peacemaker". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on November 18, 2018. Retrieved March 29, 2007.
- ^ "Peacemaker: Filming Locations". MovieLoci.com. April 5, 2004. Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2004.
- ^ Schmitt, Eric (October 19, 1997). "Clearance Sale". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 26, 2021. Retrieved September 4, 2021.
- ^ a b c "DreamWorks woos Clooney from U for 'Peacemaker'". Variety. Retrieved September 25, 2022.
- ^ "'The Morning Show' director Mimi Leder on moving the show past 'catfighting' in Season 3: 'Our focus is on women's agency'". 22 September 2023.
- ^ "The Peacemaker". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved September 29, 2022.
- ^ "The Peacemaker". Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved October 17, 2009.
- ^ "CinemaScore". cinemascore.com. Archived from the original on 2019-12-14. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
- ^ Maslin, Janet (September 26, 1997). "The Cold War Is Back, Nuclear Bombs and All". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 4, 2021. Retrieved September 4, 2021.
- ^ Savlov, Marc (September 26, 1997). "The Peacemaker - Movie Review". The Austin Chronicle. Archived from the original on September 4, 2021. Retrieved September 4, 2021.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (September 26, 1997). "The Peacemaker". Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times Media Group. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved September 4, 2021 – via RogerEbert.com.
- ^ Gleiberman, Owen (October 3, 1997). "The Peacemaker". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on April 14, 2021. Retrieved September 5, 2021.
- ^ Berardinelli, James. "Peacemaker, The (United States, 1997)". Reelviews. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved September 4, 2021.
