Film: Traitor

Director: JeffreyNachmanoff

Studio: Alliance Films

Principle Actors: DonCheadle, Guy Pearce, and Saïd Taghmaoui

Length of Feature: 110 minutes

Release Date: August 27 2008.

Rating: RatedPG-13 for intense violent sequences, thematic material and brief language.

Reviewed By: Ashley Hunking (Vancouver Correspondent - Canada)

Themovie Traitor is a fast paced, sometimes thrilling, experiencethat suffers beneath the weight of too many complicated themes. Swiftly movingplot lines overtakes serious and admirable attempts to develop texturedsubjects. To its credit, Traitor isone of very few recent Hollywoodfilms to dramatize issues of faith (Muslim) with more than caricature andcondescension. Director Jeffrey Nachmanoff and Steve Martin conceived the storytogether. Martin, known as a comedian, demonstrates here a literary awarenessof the complexity inherent to matters of faith. Human depths are the quagmireof the profound and its abuse. Perhaps this is best encapsulated by the maincharacter's (Sam played by Don Cheadle) mantra, "If a man hasn't discoveredsomething to die for, he's not fit to live." This famous quote, originallyspoken by Martin Luther King (a pacifist defending the right to civil protest),is here a re-contextualized defense of bad behavior in good people.

The story begins in Sudan (circa 1978) with a suicide bombing bycar. We are immediately brought to the present day where a terroristtransaction is taking place. Sam (Don Cheadle) is selling custom-built bombdetonators to Yemen terrorists. The transaction turns sourwhen a special task force of FBI agents ransacks the building. Sam and the restof the terrorists are imprisoned in a dingy jail. Sam, a necessarilymisunderstood loner is accused of being a traitor by his fellow prisoners, to whichhe replies, "Then why am I in here with you?" This basically sets the stage forthe rest of the film. The plot revolves around deconstructing Sam's identityand his relationship with the terrorists. Sam is complex and mysterious. Whenan intimidating prisoner kicks an old man's food away, Sam reveals (apparent)integrity in offering his food. When the bully severely beats Sam, his previousantagonists come to his rescue. Together they plot an escape from the prison.This is a story of one man must give up his integrity to live up to his ideals.

Traitoris an attempt at acomplex movie that engages the topic of faith versus fanaticism whilehitting all the marks we expect in an American movie about terrorism; suicidebombers, cynical jabs at U.S politics and a minor examination of the terroristpsyche. I wouldn't say thatthe movie unveils the meanings behind fanaticism, but it does eloquently observea man of devote faith immersed in an increasingly fragmented world.This is a curiously difficult movie to rate. I really want to like it, and dolike it, but several scenes are too preposterous to believe; in that sense it'seffectiveness is limited. Traitor isa watchable action movie targeting the subject matter of terrorism post 9/11.