ReviewThe Translators film review: French whodunit thriller a gripping experience despite unlikely subject matter

3.5/5 stars

Translation is often considered a mundane and tedious job, so a whodunit thriller revolving around a group of professional translators at work sounds about as plausible as the plot of a Fast and Furious movie.

But credit to French filmmaker Régis Roinsard (Populaire), because The Translators manages to intrigue and entertain throughout its 100-minute run-time despite perhaps one twist too many in the third act.

The mystery here isn’t who’s the killer – though people do die in this film – instead it’s which of the nine translators locked in a secluded French mansion had leaked the first 10 pages of a highly anticipated French novel, the third and final chapter of a hit trilogy that had taken the world by storm.

Early scenes establish that the leak should have been impossible – the nine translators, each from a different country in Europe, had been hired by a conniving French publisher to translate the manuscript for their local market. The nine have been stripped of their phones and access to the internet, and were constantly under watch during their daily translating work.

Alas, the pages somehow ended up on the internet, costing the publisher potentially hundreds of millions. Refusing to let the translators out of the mansion until the culprit is found, the film takes a claustrophobic turn as the nine begin suspecting one another, with nowhere to go.