IS IT A BOMB?

By RICHARD CORLISS

Three years in the making! At a cost of $2.7 billion! From three of the most powerful men in show biz! Ladies and gents, DreamWorks SKG proudly presents: The Peacemaker!

Actually, the film cost a thrifty $50 million; the $2.7 billion is for the startup of the multimedia company that Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen created in 1994. But since DreamWorks has been on the pokey side delivering boffo product from its TV and music divisions, the release of The Peacemaker has sparked anxious anticipation. Shouldn't the studio's first film, like the opening bars of a symphony, make a statement about the outfit's ambitions?

Not this one. The picture is an urgent if conventional thriller about the theft of a nuclear bomb by a Serbian terrorist. Every nation wants to defuse the bomb since the terrorist says he will use it to blow up the United Nations. But in Michael Schiffer's script the task is pretty much left to a cowboy and a lady: U.S. Army Colonel Tom Devoe (George Clooney) and nuclear scientist Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman). They race around the globe (the film was shot in 10 countries), kill villains, crash cars and tap on computers.

Standard action-film stuff, including the big-vehicle-dangling-off-a-precipice scene from Spielberg's The Lost World. It works well for a while, thanks to Mimi Leder's bustling direction and to Clooney, who has a gift for eroticizing impatience. ("Women!" his stare says. "Can't live with 'em; they can't live without me.") Then the film finds sympathy for its villain and goes softly nuts with him. In the final chase everyone's IQ drops about 20 points.

The rest of The Peacemaker moves with familiar efficiency. It ain't DreamWorst. It's just an odd little film for the big guys to say hello with.

--By Richard Corliss