The Peacemaker (1997 film)

The Peacemaker is a 1997 American action/thriller film starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman and directed by Mimi Leder. It is also 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 and Vienna.

Plot summary

The movie begins in an Eastern Orthodox church in Pale, Bosnia and Herzegovina, when an unidentified man (later revealed to be a Bosnian diplomat to the UN) is murdered in the church's narthex after receiving a page to meet someone outside.

The scene then immediately shifts to a missile base in Chelyabinsk, Russia, where SS-18 ICBMs are being decommissioned. Ten nuclear warheads are loaded onto a train and sent to a separate site for dismantling. However, a high-ranking Russian general has other plans. Along with a rogue tactical unit, he kills all the soldiers on-board the transport train and then transfers nine of the warheads to another train running on parallel tracks. He then activates the timer on the remaining warhead and shunts the transport away from his train and onto a collision course with a passenger train. The passenger train's engineer is unable to avoid the attack. Minutes later, the 500-kiloton warhead detonates, killing the survivors and delaying and confusing any investigation.

The detonation immediately attracts the attention of the US government. Even though the detonation was staged to look like an accident, White House nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly (Kidman) is not convinced: SS-18 warheads can only be detonated deliberately. She believes that Chechnian terrorists are behind the incident. Smooth-talking and irreverent US Army Special Forces officer Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe (Clooney), earlier seen facing a Congressional hearing, disrupts her briefing to advocate his own theory that the crash and the detonation were both staged to hide the hijacking of the other warheads on board. A call to Devoe's long-time friend and Russian counterpart, Dimitri Vertikoff (Armin Mueller-Stahl), adds credence to his hypothesis and he is assigned as Dr. Kelly's military liaison.

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 send out several carloads of thugs to kill them. Vertikoff, thinking he can pay them off, is instead killed. Kelly and Devoe manage to escape, but an enraged Devoe returns to kill most of the would-be assassins at the risk of his and Kelly's life. Information from the trucking company shows that the nukes are bound for Iran. US surveillance satellites place the truck in a long traffic jam in Dagestan but cannot isolate it; Devoe does by using a ruse, calling the general's cell phone and intimidating him with memories of the smart bomb footage from Desert Storm. The satellite, tracking the traffic jam in real time, then sees a truck attempting to angle its way out and is able to verify its license plate.

Stopped at a checkpoint, the general has his men kill its Russian guards. Devoe is then forced to lead a group of special forces into Russian airspace to stop them. Denied entry, one of their helicopters is shot down by a Russian SAM battery, but the remaining choppers evade and are able to stop the truck carrying the warheads. A lone man flees the truck and a savage fight ensues; the rogue Russian general is killed and the warheads are seized. Interrogation of the surviving member of the group reveals that one warhead remains missing.

Further work on the information from the trucking company leads the IFOR to a Sarajevo address. Inside is a video cassette of a Yugoslav named Dušan Gavrić (Marcel Iureş), earlier seen giving piano lessons and talking to his brother (the man who fled the truck with the missing warhead). Gavrić disclaims any specific allegiance in the Yugoslav Wars ("I am a Serb, a Croat, and a Muslim"), but blames other countries for supplying weapons to all sides in the war. As Dr. Kelly realizes he intends to bomb a meeting at the UN headquarters in New York City and the city goes into lockdown, Gavrić sneaks into Midtown Manhattan with the Bosnian diplomatic delegation. A flashback shows that Gavrić wants to avenge the death of his wife and daughter, who were killed in Sarajevo's Sniper Alley. He and his brother are finally found by the New York Police Department. His brother killed, a wounded Gavrić is followed into a parochial school and then a small church. Devoe confronts Gavrić, saying, "It's not our war!" Gavrić responds, "It is now!" and commits suicide, knowing that the bomb is set to go off in a matter of minutes and cannot be deactivated. With only seconds to spare, Dr. Kelly is able to remove a part of the explosive lens shell of the bomb, preventing the primary explosion from establishing critical mass within the plutonium core. The primary wrecks the church, but the warhead itself does not detonate. Devoe and Kelly both survive with minor injuries.

Cast

Box Office

The film earned $41,263,140 domestically and $69,200,000 elsewhere, bringing its total to $110,463,140.

External links

• The Peacemaker at the Internet Movie Database
• The Peacemaker at Box Office Mojo
• The Peacemaker at Rotten Tomatoes