[rating:4]
Director: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Starring: Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Said Taghmaoui, Jeff Daniels
Don Cheadle is a hell of an actor, and it’s always a good thing when he gets something of substance, like a Hotel Rwanda, that’s worthy of his talent. In Traitor, he makes a strong performance from potentially difficult material, and is the key reason this introspective thriller about Islamic terrorism is worth your ten dollars.
Writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff takes pains to make a film that is not all shaky-camera neo-tension filmmaking on top of a shopworn plot (by which I do mean last year’s The Kingdom. 
The film follows Sudan-born, American-raised Samir (Cheadle) as he goes from apparently indifferent arms runner (he cracks a mildly derisive joke at the expense of suicide bombers, to a guy who trains and sends out suicide bombers) to committed jihadi providing the hands-on explosive know-how for a massive terror campaign. Samir has several conflicting loyalties in his history, not the least of which is his unwavering devotion to Islam and the issue of whether that calls him to help kill Westerners, or whether it instructs him to be a man peace and justice. In following Samir’s deepening involvement in a major terrorist network, we get a portrait of that world that Nachmanoff takes pains to paint evenhandedly.
The film does not preach, but Nachmanoff manages to get his enlightened FBI agent (Guy Pearce) to speak out against violent interrogations of terror suspects, and to observe, with statistical backing, that not all Muslims are Arabs or terrorists. 
We are also presented terrorists, mostly in the person of Samir’s best friend, Omar (an excellent Said Taghmaoui), who are intelligent and likable men who say things like, “Tactics always change. You don’t defeat an empire by fighting by their rules. Once, the Americans were ‘terrorists’ to the British. They already forget their history.” This and other brief nods to what might be called the opposition perspective are not meant to be—and don’t come close to being—sympathetic to terrorists or Muslim fundamentalists. Yet the humanizing of these “bad guys” is effective. It’s worth noting that the terrorists are always dealing in loyalty and faith and their own sort of integrity, while investigators like Pearce and his jerkier partner are always trying to get suspects to betray their comrades, and they use threats and lies as tools. Do we ever doubt whose mission is more moral? No. But do we get some sense of what it’s like to live on the other side? Absolutely.
An excellent cast, a convincing runthrough of global locations, a compelling story and smart filmmaking conspire to create an interesting thriller that isn’t afraid to be cerebral and character-driven, rather than about the next fight scene. Those whose palates have been deadened by a steady diet of frenetic action thrillers, from the ever-blurry Bourne films to this summer’s amazing crop of hyperactive and brutal ’splodey films (even the really good ones) might find this too quiet, too boring, too much with the talky-talky, but that’s a shame. The suspense here isn’t so much about whether bad guys will be caught, but whether Cheadle’s Samir will make it out of this movie with body or soul intact. That’s not to say the film doesn’t have a good few tricks. There’s a sudden action sequence in a parking garage that so changes Samir’s reality that an engaged viewer can’t help dropping his jaw in shock, and the tension that ratchets up as the film nears its climax is taut and well-earned.
There is a key drawback: At the end of the film, Cheadle is dealing with both logistical plot crises and matters of his soul. His solution to the plot problems is a terrific gag, funny in a gotcha way, but it belongs in an entirely different movie, something maybe with Bruce Willis cackling and wisecracking. It’s jarring and unnecessary, and also violates the premise of the situation Cheadle’s facing. To give detail would be cruelly spoilerific, so trust me when I say it’s a really stupid filmmaking choice, but it doesn’t derail the film. The film also wraps up with some awkwardly clunky dialogue, but it’s only about a tenth as bad as the embarrassing babble that closed out The Dark Knight, and we’re all forgiving that, right?
My girlfriend and I spent more than an hour after the film debating, with some intensity, whether that plot resolution was too pat (my take) and whether Cheadle’s motivations and behavior in the film were not fully believable (hers), even given the filmmakers’ wise choice (ours) not to spoon-feed us anything. We have to connect dots. We talked about the world we’d been shown, how it fit with what we’d seen in other fiction and nonfiction representations, and how human nature plays out. It was a good discussion, the kind you can only get from watching a strong, though imperfect, work.
Tags: don cheadle, drama, thriller
