The Peacemaker
The Peacemaker ★★½ 1997 (R)
First-time feature director Leder teams up with fellow “ER” vet Clooney on the first theatrical release for Dreamworks SKG. Clooney's Army Intel officer Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe works with White House nuke expert Dr. Julia Kelly (Kidman) when a renegade Russian colonel diverts some nuclear warheads, scheduled for dismantling, into the hands of a Bosnian diplomat (Iures) with a grudge against the West. Plenty of well-constructed action set pieces and a reasonably plausible plot overcome a lack of snappy dialogue. Extra credit for making the terrorist human instead of the usual evil caricature, and for letting the two leads work together without having to sleep together. 123m/C VHS, DVD . George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Marcel Iures, Alexander Baluyev, Randall Batinkoff, Jim Haynie, Michael Boatman, Gary Werntz, Holt McCallany, Joan Copeland, Carlos Gomez, Rene Medvesek, Alexander Strobele; D: Mimi Leder; W: Michael Schiffer; C: Dietrich Lohmann; M: Hans Zimmer.