The big draw to director Mimi Leder‘s political action thriller The Peacemaker was–big surprise–the casting of George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, two of the hottest movie stars at the time. Their faces are all over the posters, TV ads and trailers, and honestly, they remain the most compelling reason to watch, their chemistry and commitment to the potboiler plot fun and by and large convincing. But here’s a strange thing … all that star power and neither one of them show up until a full seventeen minutes into the flick! What’s that about? Let’s find out.
First, some setup. Kidman is Dr. Julia Kelly, head of the National Security Council Nuclear Smuggling Group, alerted to a nuclear event in the Russian countryside, convinced it’s a terrorists act until US Army Ranger Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe (Clooney at his most Cloony-est) offers a second opinion: it was an elaborate heist. Now it’s a globetrotting chase to secure a cache of nuclear weapons before the worst can happen, but will they get to the madman (Marcel Iures) with the nukes before it’s too late? The answer is a surprise.
Written by Michael Schiffer, based on the book One Point Safe by Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Redlich Cockburn, The Peacemaker is a serviceable adventure with a good cast and solid direction, hampered only but its lack of innovation. We’ve seen this all before, every tick on the list checked, with car chases and gunfights, loads of silly dialogue like “You’re in the real world now” and a bad guy wrapped in revenge, solemnly playing piano in-between the action. It’s fun and predictable, while Clooney chews up the scenery and Kidman reminds everybody that she’s a woman and that it shouldn’t matter. It was 1997. Things were different. She’s awesome.
Back to the start and those seventeen minutes. It kinda reminds me of a classic James Bond movie pre-title sequence but without the wink and a nod. And Bond. After a quick murder of someone we don’t know, it’s off to a military trainyard where a transport train is loaded with warheads ready for dismantling. Some are not happy. One seems to have something up his sleeve.
As the platoon of soldiers riding in the car behind the weapons sleeps, the train streaking across the countryside, they are soon overtaken by a second train carrying a rogue unit commanded by Russian Army General Aleksandr Kodoroff (Aleksandr Baluev). In a daring bit of stunt work, they jump from the roof of one train to the other and once inside, slaughter everyone, then steal nine missiles, leaving one behind rigged to blow. Now on a runaway train, heading straight for a passenger train coming the other direction, a nuclear bomb is set to do more than scorch the landscape, it’s hiding a getaway that could mean nuclear Armageddon.
So why is it great? First, Leder stages the moment with patience, peppering the opening credits on screen as the train barrels along in the night. It’s moody and heavy with suspense. We see restless soldiers, disappointed by their duty to reduce their arms, then spend some time with an officer who knows that not far down the track, these good men in uniform are gonna meet their doom. But he’s getting cold feet, and not because he’s literally riding a train in the middle of Russia.
Leder strikes a real sense of urgency in the imagery, some beautiful shots of white smoke billowing out of the stack as it passes through the heavy black tress, strains of Russian choir music layered overhead. They pass an old Russian farmhouse, a man in the outhouse seemingly familiar with the timing of the train but not the one right behind it, a train we know carries bad guys because the lights inside are red, matching the glowing night vision on the headgear of the assassins waiting for orders. It’s creepy and a little horror-esque, especially with what follows as they make their way to the sleeping soldiers.
This ruthless and cowardly act, killing sleeping men, is traumatic but it’s also important in establishing the conviction of the man behind the deed (not to mention the commitment of the soldiers in carrying it out). However, when the first train collides with the passenger train, it feels really bad, but then you realize, oh dang, that nuclear bomb is gonna go off. And then it does.
That’s when we cut back to the old farmer and his wife, hearing the crash, having stepped out into the cold night to see the little flickers of fire on the horizon, which then suddenly erupts into a mushroom cloud of horror, filling the sky and racing toward them with blinding speed. They are of course vaporized, and it’s Leder’s smart decision to do this, as sad as it is, because it utterly humanizes the madness of it all, these two innocent people caught in the middle of something they know nothing about, fried to dust because of blind ambition. It’s fantastic.
The Peacemaker is a flawed film but it is better than it gets credit for, mostly because of Leder’s direction and the bond between Clooney and Kidman, both breathing life into characters that feel lived in and authentic. I really like what Kidman does throughout as Kelley, her expressions and little mannerisms as she tries to keep with Devoe. It’s witty, it’s believable, and it’s sometimes chilling. While I can’t say I was on board with the whole experience, I do highly recommend it, if anything for its throwback quality, but mostly because the opening train heist is a real fun piece of filmmaking. It’s a great movie moment.