Traitor

When a film is critically panned and accused of opportunism, fearmongering, and being a propaganda machine for "racist paranoia", it's no surprise that it isn't well-known. Traitor (2008), starring Don Cheadle, Said Taghmaoui, and Guy Pearce, is clumsy in the way the works of most first-time directors are clumsy. However, with suprisingly mature discussions of some things that are very un-PC to talk about and solid performances across the board, Traitor may be a bit long at 1:45 but is well worth the time.

The story follows Samir Horn (Cheadle), a black man with an American mother and Sudanese father who came to the States as a young teen after his father was killed in a car bombing. As an adult, Samir joined the U.S. Army Special Forces - ie., the people who go places where the U.S. military has no official presence - and specialized in explosives. On a Middle Eastern operation, he went AWOL only to turn up on the American radar years later, supplying Muslim terrorists with detonators. It should be mentioned at this time that Samir is Muslim himself. Arrested when the Yemeni military busts his detonator delivery, Samir finds himself in a local prison and comes to befriend fellow Muslim Omar (Said Taghmaoui,Three Kings). Omar is part of a highly organized terror cell, and takes Samir with him during a planned jailbreak, at which point Samir goes from "neutral" supplier to full-on jihadist. As the film progresses, so do increasing questions regarding Samir's loyalties insofar as his faith, assorted citizenships, and good and evil. Samir's work with Omar and co. is interspersed with the work of FBI agents Clayton and Archer (Pearce and Minority Report's Neal McDonough), for whom Samir has become a key player in domestic terror plots.

Doesn't that sound controversial? The satisfying thing is, Traitor isn't nearly as controversial (read: incendiary) as it could have been, and for all the right reasons. Still, there are many aspects that will offend the militantly politically correct; for example, Muslims engaged in terrorist acts. When Clayton interviews Samir's mother, she asserts the familiar refrain that either you're a Muslim - implicitly, a good person too - or you're not; extremists are simply not Muslim, hence there's no such thing as a Muslim extremist. Through the character of Omar in particular, writer Jeffery Nachmanoff gently but firmly exposes the narrow falsehood of this popular assertion, and to some degree the arrogance of believing that your faith is the one that has no extremist factions. It's factors like this, and the way in which they're handled on-screen, that make Traitor a genuine dialogue inducer instead of the shrill, bigoted, self-righteous mess it so easily could have been. On the same note, Traitor is also interesting for it's exploration of faith working itself out through deeds, whether for good or ill. Samir is working out his faith through his actions and choices, as is Omar, albeit in a different fashion, and to contrast them is a leader of their cell who comes across as no man of faith, but the Muslim version of someone who only goes to church on Christmas. Agent Clayton, engaged in a conversation about religious extremism, talks about his experiences as a Southern Baptist and how he grew up watching the KKK burn crosses on people's lawns - and then recalls how "me, my daddy, and others from our church would drive over and put them out." Little things like this give Clayton's character, and the film as a whole, its credibility - the citizens of Traitor demonstrate what they believe not by telling, but by doing. In an interesting and bold decision, the makeshift terrorist madrassa Samir, Omar and co. have for a home base is in France, a country that's made lots of headlines in the past few years for its institutional (and casual) anti-Mulsim bigotry. This may be the last straw that led Entertainment Weekly and others to dismiss Traitor as "racist paranoia", however, it rises beyond that in the context of the film as a whole and the character studies situated within. I wonder what comments Said Taghmaoui, a Frenchman himself, has to make on this aspect of the film; I imagine they'd be quite interesting. Another aspect I particularly appreciated was the fact that we never learn who killed Samir's father. Was he killed by the U.S.? By the Sudanese government? By Muslim terrorists? By Muslim anti-terrorists? Leaving this in doubt was a wise writing decision, because it compliments the film and adds to the dialogue instead of muddying the waters with a cut and dried reveal. Though Traitor makes some firm pronouncements, cut and dried is not an expression that can describe it as a whole.

As mature as the writing is, at the end of the day it's Don Cheadle, Said Taghmaoui, and Guy Pearce who hold the film together and make it work. It's just always nice to see Taghmaoui and Pearce, two outstanding actors that I wish we saw more of. All three portray quiet,strong men sustained and guided by their respective faiths while confronting the conflicts of the faith/duty paradox, and all three do it very well. All three are also very handsome which, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, always enhances a film viewing experience. Did I just say that out loud?

I mentionned some clumsiness, and Traitor has the sort that's fair to expect from a directorial debut, particularly as pertains to the action elements. And yet, the action scenes mostly work, as what occurs in them forces Samir to make on-the-spot decisions regarding his conscience and loyalties, which leads back to the foundations of the film. As well, though the film has a whole lot of globetrotting, it retains its calm, eschewing the frantic "Aah! Look! We're halfway across the world!" pace popularized by the Bourne films, but rarely used as well as in those. On the questionable side of things is a plotline involving Jeff Daniels and undercover work that to me seemed implausible, but which I have been assured was actually a common practice during the Cold War and so probably hasn't entirely died out, though there are failsafes in place that the film ignored for the sake of drama. There are also a few pat lines regarding the States' relationship with the Muslim world, and the final line of the film would have been great and useful for a discussion in the middle, but as a final statement came across as contrived, slightly out of place, and a bit nonsensical. Most unfortunately, Samir's final victory requires a leap of logic almost as great at the scene in The Day After Tomorrow wherein Jake Gyllenhaal, with great melodrama and sadness, burns the books of the Library of Congress to prevent the survivors from freezing to death whilst surrounded by literal tons of hardwood furniture. I mention The Day After Tomorrow because that is the other only other significant credit (out of a total three) that writer/director Jeffery Nachmanoff has to his name, a revelation which caused my brother-in-law to use an expletive preceeded by "what the???". With this guy helming things, and helming them with that Steve Martin at his side as co-writer and executive producer, the overall quality of Traitor is all the more impressive for its bizarre pedigree.

All in all, if you like to talk about things instead of pretending they don't happen, Traitor is a solid character study and a strong, interesting commentary on faith, deeds, and duty. Try not to get your nose bent too much out of shape over Agent Archer's hilariously rude assessment of Halifax, and you should enjoy it just fine. ;)