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Traitor
Directed and written by Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Starring Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Jeff Daniels, Neal McDonough, Archie Panjabi, Aly Khan and Said Taghmaoui
Classification: 14A
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The most interesting behind-the-scenes factoid about the new international thriller Traitor is that its story was written by Steve Martin – yes, the arrow-through-his-head standup-comic-turned-actor-and-filmmaker and New Yorker contributor Steve Martin. His short treatment was turned into pages of dialogue and action by screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff (the global-cooling blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow) who then signed on to make Traitor his feature directorial debut.
The result is an entertaining, stylish flick that runs smoothly on well-positioned plot points through a few nifty twists and more than a dozen cities (including Toronto!). But Traitor becomes too busy, ultimately frustrating, and never delivers on its tantalizing promise of offering a little insight into terrorists' motives – and it's even got an inside man.
Don Cheadle plays Muslim American Samir Horn, who, as a child, watched his father die in a car bombing in Sudan; today he supplies illegal arms to Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups and even provides instructional notes. While Samir is a loner type who is in the risky business for the money rather than for the cause – or so it seems – he is pals with some of his clients.
We meet Samir in Yemen delivering a suitcase of explosives to a terrorist cell leader he met when they both worked for the mujahedeen in Afghanistan years earlier. The leader's second-in-command, Omar (Said Taghmaoui), looks on with great skepticism at the friends' happy reunion. But the tea party is busted up by FBI agent Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) and his partner, who are in town investigating an international conspiracy of some sort. They storm in with local authorities, guns blazing of course, kill a few bad guys and round up the suspects.
The agents try to coerce Samir into helping them crack the terrorist conspiracy. It's his only choice, they say: His U.S. passport has been taken away, for goodness sake – who wouldn't want to co-operate in order to get it back and have his record wiped clean? This would typically be the place where our antihero gets his motivation. He would reluctantly work for “the good guys,” which would eventually and inevitably turn him into a good guy, too.
But Samir decides to take his chances in a Yemeni prison, leaving the FBI guys scratching their heads and you thinking, hmmm, now this could get interesting. And behind bars, it does. A prison gang beats Samir up, the tipping point for Omar, who now has a chess partner and potential recruit. After being included in a daring escape, Samir decides to stick with Omar and his men to help them execute the terrorist organization's bigger plans for destroying signs of American power.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, the FBI guys have pegged Samir as a key to unravelling the terrorist conspiracy, signified by having his headshot pinned to a bulletin board in their control centre. One of their colleagues learns he is a former U.S. Special Forces engineer. No wonder he's so handy with explosives.
This is where the movie starts doing a lot of jumping around as it tries to convey the complex web of people and planning behind a major act of terrorism, and the difficulties faced by those trying to stop these acts.
This is also where you learn, if haven't figured it out already, that Samir has been deep undercover all along, working for an independent CIA contractor (a rumpled Jeff Daniels) who follows the “don't ask, don't tell” method.
After Samir's botched bombing of Marseilles (people die!), Cheadle really sells the material, keeping you guessing through the first half of the film if he's on any side or just his own. His choices are intriguing but the character could have been so much more. Once we know what team he's playing for, then Traitor becomes a neat and tidy international crime procedural that leaves us realizing money was the hackneyed motivation all along.
Special to The Globe and Mail
