Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) lives a rather boring life. He has a monstrous house, and he comes home to it each night after he moves money around each day as an investment banker.
It appears that he’s done this for some time, running the family business since his father plunged to an early death by stepping off the roof of the family mansion (which seems to be the same one where Nicholas now lives). And that’s about all we know. Well, that and that today is Nicholas’ 48th birthday, the same age that his father was when he plunged to his death. It should be an interesting day.
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Posted to
Drama on May 6th, 2006 by Chad Everett
Nicole Kidman stars as UN translator Silvia Broome in this political thriller from Sydney Pollack (who also has a smallish role in the film).
Early on, we find out that Silvia has overheard someone speaking an obscure African dialect about murdering a visiting dignitary. Even stranger, that dialect is spoken in her country of origin, a fact pointed out by Sean Penn, playing haunted secret service agent Tobin Keller.
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Posted to
Drama on March 19th, 2006 by Chad Everett
The acting in this drama was superb, especially from Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn. I find that as I watch more and more of Tim Robbins, I find that he has his characters nailed (he won an Oscar for his performance here) but they just don’t vary a whole lot. They always have the same off-kilter look, and they each make you wonder what is going on underneath the surface, but there just isn’t a lot of real depth. While I’m not the world’s largest fan of Sean Penn, I was impressed by his role here (he won too, deservedly so).
The thug-like character played by Penn is matched by Bacon’s police persona, and wouldn’t you know it? They knew each other as kids. As it turns out, Tim Robbins rounds at the trio as one of the friends who was abducted and abused one fine day while they were in the middle of some mischief making.
Penn’s character, Jimmy Markum, finds that his daughter is missing, and then that she is dead. Meanwhile, Bacon’s detective, Sean Devine claims the job of trying to figure out who did it – or at least find a reasonable suspect – before Markum uses his contacts to bring someone to justice.
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