A slick, effective thriller, Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s Traitor examines the moral aspects of terrorism and the similarities between those fighting on opposite sides. The film stars Don Cheadle, an actor we always seem to like even if he’s playing the bad guy.
Here, Cheadle plays a character working with terrorists, and maybe also working with US intelligence, and in either case his motivation is entirely a mystery to us – the film is shaped as a generic thriller, but as it went along I become less interested in discovering if Cheadle was a double- or triple-agent and more interested about knowing more about this character and why he was doing what he was doing.
The film begins with young Samir Horn’s father getting blown up by a car bomb. Years later, Samir (Cheadle) is selling bombmaking materials to terrorists in Yemen. He’s caught and thrown into a prison by FBI agents played by Guy Pearce and Neal McDonough, who become interested in this new player on the terrorism scene, a devout Muslim and US Citizen who served in the US military.
They visit his girlfriend (Archie Panjabi ) in Chicago, who refuses to believe what they tell her. Soon Samir escapes prison with terrorist leader Omar (Saďd Taghmaoui), is introduced to his organization in Europe, and begins planning a terrorist attack within the United States.
In the film’s best sequence, Samir plants a bomb in a US embassy in France that ends up killing eight people, proving himself to the terrorist organization. Surely, I thought, the movie wouldn’t argue that killing these eight people is justification for infiltrating the terrorists.
Shortly thereafter we’re given more information about Samir and his allegiances than I would have liked. But the questions still remain: who is this man, and what are his motivations, and how far is he willing to go?
By the end, I feel, the film has overplayed its hand and takes little joy in wrapping up the plot in a tidy little package. That’s because the ambiguity that had driven most of the movie is all but erased in its final scenes. Until then, however, it’s an engrossing ride.
This is director Nachmanoff’s first major feature after co-writing Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, and he displays a disarming feel for the material and the moral ambiguity at its heart. Actor Steve Martin receives a ‘story by’ credit here.
