- guardian.co.uk,
- Friday February 29 2008 15:51 GMT
Interview would make quite a decent little play. An odd battle of wits between Steve Buscemi's tetchy political journalist and Sienna Miller's brittle soap actress develops after he reluctantly goes to interview her. It's a two-act two-hander, largely played out in one room, that's well acted but hardly has enough going on to keep you intrigued with the power struggle between its sour leading pair. The most interesting thing is that the project was set up for the murdered Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who made the original in 2003; in his absence, Buscemi takes on the directing duties as well as co-scripting. I don't know how much the dialogue has changed but his character's early reference to Miller as "more famous for who she sleeps with" seems all too close to the bone. I dare say most actors have tangled with writers sent to do an interview against their will, too. Buscemi is highly watchable as ever and, as in Factory Girl, Miller keeps her end up pretty well as a New York girl-about-town. But its cross and double-cross ending seems a bit trite and the end product feels more like an actors' workshop exercise than a feature film.
