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| The Peacemaker | |
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 film poster |
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| Directed by | Mimi Leder |
| Written by | Michael Schiffer |
| Starring | George Clooney Nicole Kidman Marcel Iureş |
| Music by | Hans Zimmer |
| Cinematography | Dietrich Lohmann |
| Distributed by | DreamWorks |
| Release date(s) | September 26, 1997 |
| Running time | 124 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Peacemaker is a 1997 thriller and action movie starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. It is notable as being the very first film released by DreamWorks. The story takes place all over the world. It was in fact shot primarily in Macedonia, some sequences in New York and Philadelphia, and, to a greater extent, in Bratislava, the picturesque and still relatively undiscovered capital of Slovakia.
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Plot summary
The movie begins with an SS-20 ICBM decommissioned in an ICBM base in Chelyabinsk, Russia. Its 10 nuclear warheads are then sent on a train 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 goes off setting a massive explosion.
White House nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly (Kidman) thinks this wasn't an accident and believes that Bosnian 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 a 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 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 US 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. The denouement of the film takes place in a Catholic church, where the wounded Gavrić commits suicide, knowing that the bomb in his rucksack will detonate if Kelly and Devoe try to dismantle it. 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.
Helicopters
- The "US Air Force attack helicopters" in George Clooney's combat unit are Aérospatiale Dauphin (or the military variant, the AS565 Panther), which although they see combat use in other country's military services, is only used by the United States Coast Guard as the HH-65 Dolphin.
Selected cast
- George Clooney – as Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe
- Nicole Kidman – as Dr. Julia Kelly
- Marcel Iureş – as Dušan Gavrić
- Aleksandr Baluyev – as Gen. Aleksandr Kodoroff
- Rene Medvešek – as Vlado Mirić
- Gary Werntz – as Terry Hamilton
- Randall Batinkoff – as Ken
- Jim Haynie – as Gen. Garnett
- Alexander Strobele – as Dietrich Schumacher
- Holt McCallany – as Mark Appleton
- Armin Mueller-Stahl – as Dimitri Vertikoff
References
