"Traitor" promises to be one of the first mainstream American movies to actually get into the mind of an Islamic terrorist, but about halfway through, it loses the courage of its convictions and opts for Hollywood artificiality instead.
Don Cheadle plays Samir Horn, a devout Muslim who supplies terrorist organizations with the materials they need to carry out suicide bombings. Guy Pearce is Roy Clayton, the FBI agent who is hot on Samir's trail through most of the movie.
Although this is fairly engaging as international cat-and-mouse chase stories go (the movie takes us from Yeman to Paris to London to Toronto to Chicago and a number of places in between), a crucial plot twist in the middle (I won't reveal what it is) seriously undercuts the aura of credibility the movie has managed to establish up to that point. The script is further compromised by a series of increasingly improbable plot points that eventually take the movie out of the realm of reality and deposit it right into the heart of movie-land fantasy, with the climax ranking as one of the most purely preposterous and almost laughable resolutions we've come across in quite some time (could this be the influence of Steve Martin, who, along with writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, came up with the idea for the story?).
Cheadle and Pearce are both stolid and effective in their roles, while Said Taghmaoui acquits himself well as Samir's suicide bomber friend. The movie works hard at being fair to both sides of the conflict; thus, we're constantly being reminded that there are many more good Muslims in this world than there are bad ones, just as there are more good Christians than bad Christians and good Americans than bad Americans. And the movie does try to explore some of the mental and moral anguish taking place deep in Samir's tortured soul. But that midpoint compromise keeps "Traitor" from becoming anything more than just another Hollywood take on one of the more serious issues of our day.
Don Cheadle plays Samir Horn, a devout Muslim who supplies terrorist organizations with the materials they need to carry out suicide bombings. Guy Pearce is Roy Clayton, the FBI agent who is hot on Samir's trail through most of the movie.
Although this is fairly engaging as international cat-and-mouse chase stories go (the movie takes us from Yeman to Paris to London to Toronto to Chicago and a number of places in between), a crucial plot twist in the middle (I won't reveal what it is) seriously undercuts the aura of credibility the movie has managed to establish up to that point. The script is further compromised by a series of increasingly improbable plot points that eventually take the movie out of the realm of reality and deposit it right into the heart of movie-land fantasy, with the climax ranking as one of the most purely preposterous and almost laughable resolutions we've come across in quite some time (could this be the influence of Steve Martin, who, along with writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, came up with the idea for the story?).
Cheadle and Pearce are both stolid and effective in their roles, while Said Taghmaoui acquits himself well as Samir's suicide bomber friend. The movie works hard at being fair to both sides of the conflict; thus, we're constantly being reminded that there are many more good Muslims in this world than there are bad ones, just as there are more good Christians than bad Christians and good Americans than bad Americans. And the movie does try to explore some of the mental and moral anguish taking place deep in Samir's tortured soul. But that midpoint compromise keeps "Traitor" from becoming anything more than just another Hollywood take on one of the more serious issues of our day.