Main Cast: George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Marcel Iures, Alexander Baluev, Rene Medvesek
Release Year: 1997
Country: US
Run Time: 123 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
The first motion picture produced by DreamWorks SKG, The Peacemaker (1997) was a spy thriller that married the exotic locations and derring-do of James Bond with the high-tech obsession and post-Cold War politics of Tom Clancy. Greedy Russian military officers crash two trains into each other, the warheads aboard one causing a nuclear blast. The accident is a cover for the theft of some of the weapons for sale to terrorists and rogue governments. In the U.S., intelligence officer Lt. Col. Tom Devoe (George Clooney), isn't fooled. Neither is Dr. Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman), the acting head of a White House task force on nuclear smuggling. Devoe and Kelly team up to find the nukes, and they are able to stop the transfer of the weapons in a raid at the Iranian border, but one warhead is missing. It's in the hands of Dusan Gavrich (Marcel Iures), a grief-stricken terrorist planning to call the world's attention to the war in the former Soviet Union with a nuclear explosion in Manhattan. Although fictional, The Peacemaker was based on the magazine article "One Point Safe" by Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, a factual investigative news report about nuclear weapons smuggling in Russia. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Review
The first motion picture release under the Dreamworks SKG label is a fairly decent attempt to mount a fast-paced, James Bond-style techno-thriller. On the plus side, the film moves along well and features some swell action sequences (a train assault, a car chase, and an attack on a bridge) thanks to the solid craftsmanship of former TV director Mimi Leder, making her big-screen debut thanks to her ER crony George Clooney. For his part, Clooney is a sturdy and believable military hero, thankfully more of the "quiet professional" type of educated modern-day soldier than a cartoon-style G.I. Joe or Rambo. Nicole Kidman is believable as a scientist and even whips up a little chemistry with her co-star, although their time sharing the same space onscreen is woefully limited. On the negative side, the whole affair is emotionally flat, sparing little time to explore or even hint at the internal lives of its protagonists, leaving the audience little to root for. Oddly, the film's chief villain, extremely well-played by Romanian actor Marcel Iures, is presented in the most sympathetic terms, leading to an odd conundrum in the finale where it's difficult to know exactly for who or what to root. The Peacemaker (1997) is a decent, professional work of a Tom Clancy- or Ian Fleming-type geopolitical suspense, but it could have been better by presenting its heroes with the same heart and soul that it does its bad guy. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Dennis Bradford - Art Director, Ivo Husnjak - Art Director, William Ladd Skinner - Art Director, Keith Gonzales - Art Director, Neno Pecur - Art Director, Risa Bramon Garcia - Casting, Randi Hiller - Casting, Pat Kehoe - Co-producer, Andrew Cockburn - Co-producer, Leslie Cockburn - Co-producer, Shelley Komarov - Costume Designer, J. Stephan Buck - First Assistant Director, Mimi Leder - Director, Conrad Palmisano - Second Unit Director, David Rosenbloom - Editor, Michael Grillo - Executive Producer, John Wells - Executive Producer, Laurie MacDonald - Executive Producer, Hans Zimmer - Composer (Music Score), Leslie Dilley - Production Designer, Dietrich Lohmann - Cinematographer, Walter Parkes - Producer, Branko Lustig - Producer, Rosemary Brandenberg - Set Designer, Josh Lusby - Set Designer, Tom Nelson - Sound/Sound Designer, Brian Simmons - Sound/Sound Designer, G.A. Aguilar - Stunts Coordinator, Michael Schiffer - Screenwriter
The Peacemaker is a 1997thriller and action movie starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. It is notable as being the first film released by DreamWorks. While the story takes place all over the world, it was shot primarily in Macedonia, with some sequences in New York and Philadelphia, and, to a greater extent, in Bratislava.
The movie begins in an Eastern Orthodox church in Pale, Bosnia, when an unidentified man (later revealed to be a Bosnian diplomat to the UN) is murdered in an alley after receiving a page to meet someone outside.
The scene then immediately shifts to a missile base in Chelyabinsk, Russia, where SS-18ICBM's are being decommissioned. Ten nuclear warheads are loaded onto a train and sent to a separate site for dismantling. However, the base commander has other plans. Along with a rogue tactical unit, he kills all the soldiers onboard the train and steals the warheads. He also sets off the timer on one remaining warhead and switches tracks to send the train on a collision course with a passenger train. A few minutes later the trains collide and the thermonuclear bomb causes a massive explosion, which immediately garners the attention of the US government.
Staged to look like an accident, White House nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly (Kidman) is not convinced; she believes terrorists are behind the incident. She is given a smooth talking, irreverent US Army Special Forces officer, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe (Clooney), to work with, who has Russian contacts and is convinced that the crash was staged to hide the hijacking of the other warheads on board.
Kelly and Devoe try to track down the terrorists through an Austrian trucking company which is a front for the Russian Mafia. When the Mafia realizes they are in fact U.S. government agents, they escape, but in the process, Devoe's long time friend and Russian counterpart (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is killed in a chase ordeal with the Mafia. Devoe later finds out through the tracking system of the truck company that the nukes are in a truck headed to Iran. The truck carrying the warheads is located using a ruse in which Devoe convinces the driver over the phone that there is a smart bomb falling towards him, causing him to turn out of traffic on a road, so that the truck can be seen in an aerial photo. Devoe then leads a group of USAF Special Operations and Army Rangers illegally over the Russian border to seize it. During the operation, one of their choppers is shot down by Russian SAM battery when they enter Russian airspace. A gun fight followed by a fist fight ensue onboard the truck in which the rogue Russian commander is killed and the warheads are seized. It is later found that the trigger bomb from one of the warheads is missing. It is learned that the bomb was taken by a Bosnian, and that it may be intended to destroy the UN headquarters in New York.
One of the terrorists, Dušan Gavrić (Marcel Iureş), is a Yugoslav without identity ("I am a Serb, a Croat, and a Muslim" in reference to all sides in the war torn former Yugoslavia). He wants to avenge the death of his wife and daughter, who were killed by a sniper in Sniper Alley, Sarajevo. He blames the countries of the West for not protecting them and for greedily supplying weapons to all sides in the war. He therefore plans to blow up the United Nations building in New York City. Gavrić is finally tracked down, wounded, and cornered into a Catholic church near the UN. Davoe confronts Gavrić, saying, "It's not our war!" Gavrić responds, "It is now!", and promptly commits suicide, knowing that the bomb is set to go off in a matter of minutes. With seconds to spare, Kelly is able to remove a part of the core of the bomb, preventing it from triggering a nuclear reaction, and limiting the explosion to within the church.
Reception
The film easily earned its $50,000,000 budget back by grossing $41,263,140 domestically and $69,200,000 elsewhere, bringing its total to $110,463,140
