The Peacemaker (1997 film)

The Peacemaker is a 1997 American action-political thriller film starring George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Aleksandr Baluev and directed by Mimi Leder. It was the first DreamWorks film ever released. While the story takes place all over the world, it was shot primarily in the Republic of Macedonia and Russia, with some sequences filmed in New York City, Philadelphia, and Bratislava.

The basis for the movie was the 1997 book One Point Safe, about the state of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

Plot
In an Eastern Orthodox church in Pale, Bosnia and Herzegovina, an unidentified man is murdered after being paged to meet someone outside.

At a missile base in Russia, SS-18 ICBMs are being decommissioned. Ten nuclear warheads are loaded onto a train and sent to a separate site for dismantling. However, Russian General Aleksandr Kodoroff, along with a rogue tactical unit, kills the soldiers on board the transport train and transfers nine of the warheads to another train. Kodoroff then activates the timer on the remaining warhead and sends the transport on a collision course with a passenger train. Minutes later, the 500-kiloton warhead detonates, killing the survivors and delaying an investigation.

The detonation immediately attracts the attention of the U.S. government. White House nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly believes that Chechen terrorists are behind the incident. U.S. Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe interrupts her briefing to suggest that the crash and detonation were staged to hide the hijacking of the other warheads. A call to Devoe's long-time friend and Russian counterpart, Dimitri Vertikoff, adds credence to his hypothesis and he is assigned as Dr. Kelly's military liaison.

Kelly and Devoe try to track the terrorists through an Austrian trucking company which is a front for the Russian Mafia. When the Mafia realizes they are U.S. government agents, they send thugs to kill them. Vertikoff, attempting to pay them off, is killed. Devoe kills most of the would-be assassins, and he and Kelly escape. Information from the trucking company shows that the nukes are bound for Iran. Spy satellites place the truck in a traffic jam in Dagestan, and Devoe uses a ruse to identify it. The satellite, tracking in real time, is able to verify its license plate.

Stopped at a checkpoint, Kodoroff and his men kill the guards. Devoe then leads a special operations unit to stop them. Denied entry into Russian airspace, one of the helicopters is shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile battery, but the remaining helicopters are able to locate the truck carrying the warheads. A gunfight ensues in which Kodoroff is killed and the warheads are seized. Interrogation of the surviving member of the group reveals that one warhead was taken by another man who was able to escape before the truck was intercepted.

Further work on the information from the trucking company leads IFOR to a Sarajevo address. Inside is a video cassette of a Yugoslav named Dušan Gavrić. Gavrić disclaims any 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. Dr. Kelly realizes he intends to bomb a meeting at the UN headquarters in New York City and the city goes into lockdown. Gavrić arrives in 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. He and his brother are finally found by the NYPD. When his brother is killed by Devoe, a wounded Gavrić is followed into a parochial school and then a church. Devoe confronts Gavrić, who 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. After the nuclear attack is over, Julia spends her free time swimming and Devoe stops by and ask her for a drink, which she accepts.

Cast

 * George Clooney as Lt. Col. Thomas Devoe
 * Nicole Kidman as Dr. Julia Kelly
 * Marcel Iureş as Dušan Gavrić
 * Aleksandr Baluev as Gen. Aleksandr Kodoroff
 * Rene Medvešek as Vlado Mirić
 * Randall Batinkoff as Ken
 * Holt McCallany as Mark Appleton
 * Armin Mueller-Stahl as Col. Dimitri Vertikoff
 * Goran Višnjić as a Russian Sergeant
 * Michael Boatman as Lt. Beach
 * Carlos Gómez as Capt. Santiago
 * Sebastian Roché as German Backpacker

Box Office
The film earned $41,263,140 in the US and $69,200,000 elsewhere, bringing its total to $110,463,140.

Critical Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 39%, based on 33 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 43 out of 100 points, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.