DATE: Friday, October 3, 1997               TAG: 9710020254

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E7   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: MOVIE REVIEW

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

KIDMAN AND CLOONEY PROVIDE STAR POWER TO "THE PEACEMAKER"

``GOD, I MISS the cold war. Russia is a mess'' says the national security adviser in an early scene in ``The Peacemaker,'' the breathless new thriller which makes the most of a basically realistic treatment and exotic foreign locales.

The bad guys are the Russian mafia and rebellious military who resent having to dismantle their nuclear weapons. The movie, while operating within a standard thriller formula, manages to remind us that these are real presences in the present world. There's just enough real-word chill here to lift the film a notch above mere escapist fare.

Boil all the scientific mumbo jumbo down, though, and you've got the basic game of ``Who's got the bomb?'' ``The Peacemaker'' is fine movie entertainment that at least avoids snarling villains and silly explosions. But it still manipulates mightily to both begin and end with a bang-bang.

The two leads are appealing in their vulnerability rather than their heroics. Nicole Kidman, one of the great beauties of this movie generation, plays one of those barking, abrasive people who shout orders at everyone as she rushes through offices with a cellular phone in hand. In lesser hands she would have been just another offensive character who mistakes sternness and showiness for professionalism. Kidman, through sheer intensity, manages to suggest the kind of smartness that is groping not grasping. It is to her credit rather than the script that we pull for her character.

George Clooney is cast as a somewhat mischievous and impulsive intelligence officer with the U.S. Army's Special Forces. Clooney emerges as a movie star here. He's had false starts, including the regrettable ``Batman and Robin'' fiasco. Here, he has a kind of John Wayne role but, like his co-star, manages to suggest that fallibility is possible. ``The Peacemaker'' is the first movie that suggests he may be around to stay.

The duo realize that a nuclear explosion after a Russian train crash (the movie's required bang-up opener) was a distraction to hide the theft of nine other nuclear warheads. In time, there's a rush to stop the ``loose nukes'' from making it across the border to Iran where they would be lost forever.

Mimi Leder makes an impressive feature-film directorial debut after her two Emmy wins for ``ER'' segments. But she resorts too often to rushed dialogue to suggest frantic activity. If nothing else, Clooney and Kidman earned their money by just running. They run at every opportunity. It seems no one can stand still long enough for a conversation. Too, there is a regrettable resort to, yet again, using typing as a suspense mechanism. In modern movies, there's always a scene in which the hero beats the clock in infiltrating a computer system. It's become a cliche.

Armin Mueller-Stahl, an Oscar nominee for ``Shine,'' has an uncustomarily sympathetic role as an old friend of Clooney. Remarkably, the villain, played by Marcel Iures, is not a raving maniac. In fact, his motivation, the death of his family in Bosnia, is all the more chilling because it is rooted in reality.

The film makes terrific use of its locales in Germany, France, Macedonia, New York, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The first release of Steven Spielberg's new DreamWorks studio, it is not a novel plot, but, even within its genre, it is handled with more expertise than usual. ILLUSTRATION: MOVIE REVIEW

``The Peacemaker''

Cast: George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Marcel Iures, Armin

Mueller-Stahl

Director: Mimi Leder

MPAA rating: R (mild language and moderate violence)

Mal's rating: ***

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