Traitor

Watching this thriller leaves you feeling like the producers were playing a rigged game of scissors/paper/stone with the unwritten rules of making a successful movie.

Rule 1: NEVER do a film about the War on Terror/ Iraq/anything remotely related to America’s foreign policy misadventures this century. If relatively good films about it like ‘In The Valley Of Elah’ make no money and A-list director’s like Oliver Stone and Ridley Scott come out with movies as disappointing as ‘W’ and ‘Body Of Lies’, then you’d better have the best people in the business on board if you want to make a profit. Which brings us on to;

Rule 2: NEVER let Steve Martin (Yes, the one who was in ‘Cheaper By The Dozen’ and ‘The Pink Panther’) and Jeffrey Nachmanoff , co-writer of ‘’The Day After Tomorrow’’, write your script.

Unfortunately, the producers seemed to think that Rule 3, as laid down by George Clooney, trumped the other two, i.e. ‘’If You can get Don Cheadle in your movie, get Don Cheadle in your movie’’. In fact, the cast is the only inspiring thing about this film and even that gets tainted by how misused they are.

This reviewer went in thinking that it would be nice to see Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce, two excellent and under-utilised actors, play challenging and layered roles of true depth and complexity. Instead what you get is Guy Pearce fucking up a southern accent as the PC good-cop in the FBI duo chasing Don Cheadle, and Don Cheadle himself playing Samir Horn. An interesting idea, but one that lacks the detail for him be a convincing character. Basically, Samir Horn is a Sudani-born US citizen who is both a devout Muslim and an ex-US special forces explosives expert who the FBI suspect of being an Islamic terrorist. Horn is supposed to be something of an enigma for much of the film. We are introduced to him as a child when he watches his father get murdered in a car bombing, before being whisked through an hour in which he becomes more and more complicit in his own bombings. Then, the big twist comes and everything becomes clear. To say more would spoil the film. Looking back at all this, the makings of a great film seem to be everywhere. The basic idea is a tried and trusted classic, think ‘’Donny Brasco’’ or ‘’The Departed’’, transposed to a new and relevant setting. The casting, both lead and ensemble, is excellent. However the execution seems seriously botched. Significant parts of the film seem to have been tweaked so as to shoe-horn in another action set-piece or journey to another location. The net result of all this is that the pacing and plausibility in the movie suffer immensely.

To be fair to ‘Traitor’, it is refreshing to see a film with this subject matter that doesn’t take a pious hectoring tone, (see ‘Lions For Lambs’), or have instantly recognisable caricatures instead of characters, (see ‘Body of Lies’ with Leonardo DiCaprio’s conscientious Democrat toe to toe with Russell Crowe’s evil southern-accented Republican). Ultimately, the movie is a capable, but flawed thriller that does a better job than most at dealing with the War on Terror. What’s so frustrating is that it could have been much much more.

3/5

-Cathal Houlihan