My rating: 5.6/10Traitor is a 2008 espionage thriller film, based on an idea by Steve Martin (who is also executive producing), and written and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff. It is being produced by Overture Films, and starring Don Cheadle as a US Army Special Forces Engineer Sergeant, and Guy PearceFBI agent. The film is being produced by Don Cheadle, David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, and Jeff Silver. The project has been in development since 2002, and was originally set to be produced by Walt Disney Pictures, but was dropped due to management change. Principal photography started in early September, 2007, in Toronto and Morocco....
Overview
Director: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Writers : Jeffrey Nachmanoff (screenplay) Steve Martin (story) ...
Release Date: 27 August 2008 (USA)
Genre: Drama
Cast: Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Jeff Daniels, Neal McDonough, Archie Panjabi, Alyy Kahn, Said Taghmaoui......Review:
May as well be Kabuki, the way that Don Cheadle keeps his features firmly fixed in a dead-eyed sourpuss for the majority of Traitor. As Samir Horn, an African expatriate and former U.S. Special Operations officer now working, seemingly, as a bomb-crazed subversive, the actor gets to flex his "morose" muscles, barely cracking sweat or smile as he globe-hops to jihad's content. This is the new face of terrorism: sad, zombified, going-through-the-motions - so inured to the ease with which life can be taken that the thrill of the kill is a far-distant memory (pure training-day nostalgia).
Except it's not, because there's a twist or two or three, courtesy screenwriter/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff and story concoctor Steve Martin (who came up with the idea on the set of Bringing Down The House - think on that one a while), that reveals Traitor to be less of a subdued character study than a gotcha! New Yorker short story, one for the coast-dwelling intelligentsia to ponder from insulated glass-house heights. It's bullsh*t through and through from the first digitally augmented (and pathetically telegraphed) car bombing that sets Samir's gloomy tale in motion, which isn't to say it lacks for interest.
Traitor teeters along for a good while on technical competence and surface pleasure (Cheadle and Said Taghmaoui - as Samir's compatriot Omar - have an especially intriguing rapport) until a mid-movie narrative shift signals an overall preference for empty-headed reveals that significantly diminish the film's world, the plot machinations consistently trumping any and all emotional truth. Despite initial appearances, Cheadle remains every bit the movie star - there's only so far he can stray outside acceptable modes of behavior before having to reassure all in attendance that his and his character's actions are for an eventual greater good (not to give anything anyway beyond the fact that Samir is not who he appears to be).
Yet the more Traitor flatters its performer/producer's vanity (the halo around Samir quite literally grows, even as his facial expression remains the same), the sillier it becomes. The climactic suspense setpiece - a coordinated Thanksgiving Day attack in the heartland of America - is particularly risible, its "clever" endgame easily guessed from afar, and all the more offensive for how quickly it's brushed under the carpet, treated as an anecdotal afterthought (a suicide bomber strike within a fruited plains vacuum) with no discernible repercussions.
That's the real terror of our day and age: that any loss of life, whatever the underlying ideology from which it results, can be so callously disregarded in fact and fiction both.
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