Traitor

I like Don Cheadle (Talk To Me) a lot, which is why I was looking forward to Traitor, which I thought would be an interesting hybrid of The Bourne Identity and Enemy of the State. Oh, if only it had been that good. Cheadle, while very talented, did not save this movie in my humble opinion. Traitor was smart and suspenseful, but something about it left me feeling inexplicably depressed. It was just a downer of a movie. I definitely don’t mind serious movies, in fact I prefer them quite often, but when the closing credits rolled I felt unfulfilled and dissatisfied.

Traitor opens with a young Samir (Cheadle) playing chess with his father in their Sudanese home. The game concludes and Samir’s father leaves in his car. As he enters the vehicle it explodes, the flames searing his flesh as the image becomes seared in Samir’s memory. Fast forward to the present day and Samir is selling explosive technology to terrorist groups in the Middle East. Here is where everything gets all sketchy. The natural inclination is to root for Samir as the protagonist, but…he’s a bad guy, right? Maybe, maybe not. When a deal goes wrong and Samir and his cohorts are imprisoned, he is accused of being a traitor, hence the title of the movie. Of course double entendres abound, and I won’t spoil the movie for you. It’s too complicated for me to spoil because several moments left me confused – which is either proof of my own stupidity or a convoluted script – take your pick. Cheadle’s performance was great, and he effectively captured the conflicted duality of his character, but something was just missing from this movie. It’s a great one to add to your netflix queue or to catch on pay-per-view – but it was not a very memorable movie, despite being well-acted. I’m also unsure of what agenda Traitor tried to advance. Some parts felt very anti-American, but other aspects of the film seemed to feed into negative stereotypes about Islam. Go figure. Maybe this was a good thing since it mirrored the complexity of religion and real world politics, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Cheadle doesn’t really give bad performances, so it won’t be a total waste if you decide to check it out – I just can’t give it an unmitigated stamp of approval.