Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
8/30/08
****SPOILER ALERT:
IT'S PRETTY MUCH IMPOSSIBLE TO DISCUSS TRAITOR IN ANY MEANINGFUL WAY WITHOUT
GIVING AWAY A SECRET REVEALED AT THE MIDPOINT THAT YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO
KNOW GOING IN. HINT: IT'S IN ALL THE TRAILERS AND TV ADS****
Not that audiences have been
rushing out to see them, but the contradictions and ethical challenges
of the War on Terror would seem to present enough material to keep Serious
Filmmakers busy for, I don't know, the 500 years the War seems likely to
last. But as complicated as the interlocking issues of reigning in
the violent fringe of Muslim extremists are for most Americans, just imagine
how much more complicated they must be to the rest of the world's Islamic
population. That's the most unique wrinkle of the new thriller Traitor,
which casts Don Cheadle as a man trying to do the right thing at an intersection
of faith and violence where every choice seems like the wrong one.
A first-rate cast keeps things interesting despite the deliberate pace
chosen by writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff.
Samir Horn (Don Cheadle)
was born in Sudan, but his family moved to the United States after the
violent death of his father. We meet him arranging an arms sale to
terrorists which ends with him in a Yemeni prison, where he refuses to
cooperate with two FBI agents: the thoughtful and religious Roy Clayton
(Guy Pearce) and the brash Max Archer (Neal McDonough). His mixture
of relentless Islamic observance and willingness to stand up to prison
goons win the trust of Omar (Said Taghmaoui), one of the terrorists he
was arrested with. Omar likes his devout nature, his intelligence,
and the fact that he knows his way around explosives and when both slip
out in a prison break, takes him to meet Fareed (Aly Khan), a much bigger
fish in the terrorist pond. As Clayton and Archer follow the clues
to an upcoming terror strike, Samir participates in larger and larger attacks
including bombing a US embassy. But all is not as it seems:
Samir is really a deep, deep cover operative whose identity is known only
by his handler (Jeff Daniels). And if he thought the death of 8 people
in the embassy bombing was a high price to pay for access to Fareed's inner
circle, it's nothing compared to the massive strike the terror mastermind
expects him to help launch on US soil.
We've seen a lot of terrorists
plying their trade in parallel plotlines to all-American heroes in the
terror thrillers of the last few years. But Traitor is able
to do something none of the others have: really show us a thought
process in which people are trying to reconcile their religious conviction
and heinous crimes. Not that I find a lot of the thought on display
persuasive (but plenty of people do: “I say you're a murderer”
“Well, you're a murderer too, so it's OK that I'm a murderer” is pretty
much the only kind of logical argument voiced on the news anymore), but
I felt like the characters felt it was persuasive, and that's an achievement
in and of itself. But because Samir isn't really a terrorist, his
ethical struggle runs far deeper in all kinds of directions. He's
trying to save lives by stopping Fareed and a plan so heinous I shuddered
to even hear about it (luckily, I don't believe for a moment Fareed's assertion
that terror attacks like 9/11 are theater pitched at the American public.
Their target audience is really the faithful back home on whose support
the terrorists rely, and an attack like this that doesn't take out a symbol
of American might wouldn't mean much to that constituency). But to
be the convincing terrorist he needs to be to accomplish that goal, he
must bring about the deaths of innocent people, no matter how hard he tries
to avoid it. The Koran, we're told, says that to kill one innocent
person is like killing all Mankind, and to save one innocent person is
like saving all Mankind. What is a good Muslim to do?
Which is not to say that
Traitor is nothing but high-minded thought about Islam. It's
actually an efficient thriller in the deep cover subgenre where a lone
agent with no one to confide in must find the strength within himself to
stay on mission despite all his doubts. And Clayton and Archer's
investigation is a nifty counterpoint, as the agreeably mismatched partners
assemble evidence we've seen, haven't seen, and haven't realized the significance
of into an arrow pointing directly toward the movie's climax. The
deeper Samir gets into the domestic terror scheme, the harder it is to
imagine how he can undo it no matter what he does. But Nachmanoff
(who shares story credit with, of all people, Steve Martin) pulls one hell
of a rabbit out of his hat in the closing scenes that pays off his slow-building
story beautifully.
That twist is awesome, but
much of the credit for the movie's success goes to its' cast. Cheadle
is just what the role calls for, quiet, intellectual, conflicted and deeply
sad. Pearce, too rarely seen outside the local art house, also finds
the right note (beyond a Southern accent you just have to get used to)
for his side of the story, the kind of totally good and committed man his
LA Confidential character Ed Exley just wanted people to think he
was. He has great hot and cold chemistry with McDonough, who usually
plays smart and pushy and here just plays pushy. Taghmaoui so gloriously
hammy as Vantage Point's villain, here
plays the dramatic version of the same role, and makes Omar so fully rounded
and relatable that it's easy to forget the horrific crimes he plans to
commit. The role of smarmy fiend falls to Khan, who plays it admirably.
Daniels doesn't have a lot to do, but physically, he's just right as the
man who seems to be risking nothing while instructing Samir to risk his
very soul.
Traitor's pace will
strike most as somewhere between deliberate and downright slow, thought
Nachmanoff tries to combat that by keeping most of his scenes extremely
short. But if you stick with it, it's a strong star vehicle and as
thoughtful an examination of the ethical challenges of the terror war as
you're likely to see. I'd imagine the Koran doesn't have a final
ethical decision on both killing and saving all Mankind at the same time.
I doubt any of us do. |
