Two hours of inconsistencies.

The following contains spoilers.

The premise is simple: Nicole Kidman is a multilingual interpreter working at the UN, and overhears talk of a plot to assassinate the corrupt leader of an African nation. She reports it to the UN security team, who gets the US secret service involved, a chase ensues and, eventually, Kidman herself is the one who is holding the gun to the leader’s head in the safe room behind the podium of the General Assembly.

But how?

How did she come to be the one who was set to assassinate the leader when she apparently overheard other people plotting it? She was obviously not in it with them, or they would not have tried to knock her off.

More to the point, what was the United Nations doing calling in the American Secret Service? And why were American Secret Service agents allowed to run around the UN building waving guns about.

I know America likes to think it runs the UN, but it is an international organisation outside the jurisdiction of US law. Even the UN compound and buildings in New York are not on American soil. The actual plot of land on which they are build was donated by John D Rockerfeller Jr, as explained by Wikipedia:

The United Nations headquarters building was constructed in New York City in 1949 and 1950 beside the East River on land purchased by an 8.5 million dollar donation from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. It is a declared international zone belonging to all Member States, and as such will survive in perpetuity, forever belonging to the Member States as an asset of the UN.

It has its own security service, which should surely be the team chasing assassins around its property. You wouldn’t, after all, expect to see Italian police, or Iraqi security agents running around the UN corridors fully armed and imposing their brand of lawmaking. Although, having said that, refering back to that Wikipedia entry, it does explain that:

The site of the United Nations headquarters has extraterritoriality status like embassies do. This affects some law enforcement where UN rules override the laws of New York City, but does not give immunity to crimes that take place there.

It all sounds a bit fuzzy, so perhaps I’m being a bit harsh on it, but there is a line early on where a security guard refuses to let them in, telling them they aren’t in America any more, but are on international territory. If this is the case, then what follows is a major plot inconsistency.

I don’t understand how this can have been allowed. This was the first film ever to have used the inside of the real UN building in New York as a set, so I find it hard to believe the UN itself didn’t insist on passing its eyes over the script to see how it was going to be portrayed before giving permission. Surely if it had done, it should have pointed out the inconsistencies and demanded at least a partial rewrite.

It’s an entertaining enough diversion, but not one of Kidman’s better appearances. Ho-hum, so-so, middle-of-the-road. Five out of ten.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2006 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.