The truth is complicated, at least according to the tag line of the recently released film Traitor (Overture).
This tag line is right on the money.
See, the truth about Traitor is that it is not that good of a movie, unless you factor in the winning performance from Don Cheadle.
The Oscar-nominated (Hotel Rwanda) actor has been in a plethora of good films. Even when he is in less impressive fare, he rarely, if ever, turns in a bad performance. Traitor is no exception.
Though the movie wasn’t mind-blowing, it was much better than the trailers made it seem.
The movie was advertised as a lame action thriller that looked like a standard Wesley Snipes vehicle. Traitor is a lot more intelligent and dramatic than that.
Traitor is, among other things, about terrorism (along the lines of the string of similarly themed movies including The Kingdom and Rendition as of late) and a man who is so deep undercover that no one knows who he is really working for.
This man, Samir Horn (Cheadle), is a devout Muslim whose father, a religious leader, was murdered when Samir was a child.
As the movie begins, Samir is introduced as an explosives dealer who sells to whoever is willing to pay, no matter what the intended use might turn out to be.
By the end of the movie, however, he has changed roles so many times that audiences might be scratching their head as much as the two FBI agents on his track, Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce, Memento) and Max Archer (Neal McDonough, 88 Minutes).
Throw in an under-utilized Jeff Daniels (The Lookout) as Carter, the mysterious government worker keeping Samir’s mission a secret, and Sa’d Taghmaoui (Vantage Point) as Samir’s good friend, a higher up in a terrorist network, and you have a rather convoluted plot line.
Traitor is an interesting movie simply because, in some ways, it humanizes the terrorists in a way other recent films haven’t.
It doesn’t say that they are good people exactly, but it tries to understand the mind set of these people. They actually believe they’re doing God’s will.
In addition, Traitor gives a picture of the cozy, western-influenced lives many of the people running terrorist organizations live.
In one scene, terrorist leader Fareed (Aly Khan, A Mighty Heart) talks about eating pork and drinking liquor to deceive the enemies.
However, it is clear he obviously enjoys the pleasures to be gained from this deception.
In the end, Samir is a truly devout Muslim. He loves his God and says that the violence and attacks are not the answer, if only everyone else could realize that.
Traitor is a good, not great, film that tries to see the issues from all the sides, meeting this goal with only mild success.
It is worth watching, however, simply for Cheadle’s excellent turn.
