The Peacemaker was the film that launched Dreamworks, the studio created by Spielberg, Geffen and Katzenberg. The studio that was supposed to revitalise Hollywood but its own dreams fizzled out less than a decade later.
George Clooney and Nicole Kidman go out of the gates helped with talent from the television show ER such as director Mimi Leder, so Clooney will feel comfortable with his transition from television star to movie star.
Watching the film again, the start of the movie looked rather familiar. It seems Spielberg riffed it for his fourth Indiana Jones film in 2008. Some rogue Russian military officers kill the soldiers in a transport train and steal nuclear warheads. One warhead is left behind which crashes to an oncoming passenger train and is then detonated.
The Russians claim it is an accident. The White House nuclear expert Dr Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman) believes that the bomb was set off deliberately by terrorists rebels from somewhere like Chechnya. Maverick Colonel Thomas Devoe (George Clooney) believes that this was an elaborately staged heist to market nuclear weapons to the highest bidder. With the bomb going off it could be months before anyone can get to the accident site to find out what happens, enough time for the villains to carry out their plan.
Kelly and Devoe join forces and discover that the plan involves more than selling nuclear missiles to a rogue state but linked to the events of the breakup of Yugoslavia as a Bosnian Serb leader wants to make a statement.
The film is a solid action thriller, some of it is nonsense. The main villain Dusan describes himself as a Serb, a Croat and a Muslim. I have no idea what this meant but it might feel insulting to the survivors of the Bosnian ethnic genocide in the 1990s.
However it is a well paced thriller, some of the CGI does look cheap, it appears to be intelligent by mentioning all the current hot spots of the era. There is good chemistry between Kidman and Clooney but their characters are thinly sketched. The film has nothing that makes it outstanding or even memorable.
George Clooney and Nicole Kidman go out of the gates helped with talent from the television show ER such as director Mimi Leder, so Clooney will feel comfortable with his transition from television star to movie star.
Watching the film again, the start of the movie looked rather familiar. It seems Spielberg riffed it for his fourth Indiana Jones film in 2008. Some rogue Russian military officers kill the soldiers in a transport train and steal nuclear warheads. One warhead is left behind which crashes to an oncoming passenger train and is then detonated.
The Russians claim it is an accident. The White House nuclear expert Dr Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman) believes that the bomb was set off deliberately by terrorists rebels from somewhere like Chechnya. Maverick Colonel Thomas Devoe (George Clooney) believes that this was an elaborately staged heist to market nuclear weapons to the highest bidder. With the bomb going off it could be months before anyone can get to the accident site to find out what happens, enough time for the villains to carry out their plan.
Kelly and Devoe join forces and discover that the plan involves more than selling nuclear missiles to a rogue state but linked to the events of the breakup of Yugoslavia as a Bosnian Serb leader wants to make a statement.
The film is a solid action thriller, some of it is nonsense. The main villain Dusan describes himself as a Serb, a Croat and a Muslim. I have no idea what this meant but it might feel insulting to the survivors of the Bosnian ethnic genocide in the 1990s.
However it is a well paced thriller, some of the CGI does look cheap, it appears to be intelligent by mentioning all the current hot spots of the era. There is good chemistry between Kidman and Clooney but their characters are thinly sketched. The film has nothing that makes it outstanding or even memorable.