James Newton Howard's score for director
Sydney Pollack's espionage thriller The Interpreter is dutifully chilly and elegant, forgoing the brassy bombast of the summer blockbuster and focusing on serving as a non-intrusive background to illuminate the furrowing brows of
Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn.
Howard, who has mined similar territory for M. Night Shyamalan, phones in enough atmosphere to cover three new seasons of The X-Files, relying on drawn-out, two-chord motifs with the occasional flash of electronica and Norwegian worldbeat siren
Kirsten Bråten Berg to provide almost constant tension. ~ James Christopher Monger