Traitor
Don Cheadle stars as Samir – a devout
Muslim American living in Yemen and dealing explosives and explosive
accessories to a terrorist group. As the group starts planning more and
more high profile attacks, and Samir becomes a bigger part of their
plans, they have attracted the attention of FBI Agents Clayton (Guy
Pearce) and Archer (Neal McDonough), who feverishly are trying to stop
them. However, Clayton is intrigued as to why Samir seems to be part of
this heinous plot, especially as he learns more about his target and
the man’s background.
What is Samir’s
goal?
Who is he betraying?
Traitor is a more than solid
thriller, but one that simmers too much, when it needs to boil. Cheadle
is fantastic as the morally driven Samir, and adds a great deal of
complexity and depth to the character to make the audience experience
his conflicts. Writer/director Jerry Nachmanoff (based on a story he
developed with Mr. Steve Martin, who should have played some sort of
small role in the movie as a penance for making Cheaper By
The Dozen 2)
adds a wonderful faith-based reasoning and motivation for
Samir’s efforts that is fascinating and makes the character
much more interesting than you might think. Of course, Cheadle helps
with that as well as we feel his pain as plans go wrong and he
experiences a great deal of guilt for what he has done.
Nachmanoff also makes a good decision to avoid politics and the
passions of today’s world to focus on the plot and the
action. No one preaches. No one makes speeches. No one waives a flag in
your face. Both Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly will have
to find something else to gripe about. Instead, the audience just gets
a challenging mystery and one of the best “Oh My
God” moments of the year.
Unfortunately, the audience doesn’t get enough of those
“Oh My God” moments. We get some funny moments with
the dialogue, but it could have been more, and the audience definitely
could use more heated or passionate exchanges between characters. Most
of the time, I felt like Nachmanoff was content to focus on
Cheadle’s expressions, which are great, but how many times
can we look at him and see the pain? We get it.
Traitor might not quite make an
Oscar push, but it is one of the better movies you will be able to see
for the next few weeks.
Traitor is rated PG-13 for intense
violent sequences, thematic material and brief language
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