This terrorist thriller attempts to show an Islam that deserves respect but the characters are mouthpieces for their respective sides.
By Bob Brown
WHAT if there were a counter-terrorist operative who was so deeply under cover that his government could not be sure he hadn’t turned, or that he himself hadn’t betrayed his own cause? Steve Martin proposed an intriguing idea with a twist, and the result is Traitor.
Jeffrey Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow), originally assigned as screenwriter, later turned director, enthusiastically embraced this project as a thinking person’s action movie. “I feel like this is my ideal movie,” he said in production notes to the film. “It’s a mix of action and politics and espionage… We get a chance to blow some things up, have some amazing fight sequences, some gunfire, and those kinds of exciting elements within a broader story that is a character-based drama.”
It’s all that, of course, but on occasion the sermonizing breaks through the smoke screen of entertainment to remind us that we are being taught a lesson. The main character on which the story turns is Samir Horn (Don Cheadle), a devout Muslim of North African parentage, who was raised in Chicago, served in U.S. Special Forces and is now a counter-espionage agent for a shadowy U.S. government operation. He has penetrated deeply into terrorist networks in North Africa because of his bomb-making skills and his thorough grounding in the culture. Being caught up in their world as he sells explosives, Horn is also caught up in the raids, which are being conducted with the assistance of the FBI.
Opposing this man of faith is another man of faith, Agent Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce). Son of a Baptist minister, Clayton studied religion before giving it up to join the FBI. Whenever he conducts an interrogation, Clayton is the ethical “good cop” versus his colleague Max Archer (Neal McDonough), the “bad cop” who would beat up subjects first and ask questions later. Their disagreements in the field allow the script to showcase what is wrong with the torture techniques that have captured headlines lately, as if this hasn’t been obvious to us for a long time. Of course, Horn is so deeply undercover, he cannot reveal himself to Clayton when he is caught in a raid. Rather than be extricated, Horn allows himself to be jailed with his “fellow terrorists,” including another devout Muslim whom he has befriended, Omar (Said Taghmaoui).
The developing friendship between Horn and Omar is complicated by the fact that although the two genuinely respect each other, Horn cannot tell his friend that the terrorists have twisted Islam to their purposes. Horn is also distressed by his roll in any killings. There is collateral damage when innocent civilians die in an explosion he has prepared to establish his bona fides. It’s the inevitable result of fighting on the “good” side, as Horn’s intelligence handler, Carter (Jeff Daniels), reminds him. Horn quotes from the Quran the passages that trouble him as he sees the result of his efforts. And so Horn, a good man, is torn. He sees another good man duped by an evil cause, and an agent who is willing to set aside ethics to serve his country’s better cause.
This film poses something of the same ethical dilemma in the film Munich (2005), about the covert Israeli response to the slayings at the Munich Olympics. Mossad agents carry out their cold-blooded assassinations, but one of them is conscience-stricken enough to say he cannot reconcile it with his faith.
Although the terrorist-thriller seems to be the latest darling of Hollywood producers, this appears to be the first that tries to get behind the motivations, attempting to show an Islam that deserves respect. Nevertheless, the characters tend to become mouthpieces for their respective sides in what are complicated issues.
One can’t argue with the strength of the performances, particularly that of Cheadle, who signed on as a co-producer and helped develop the script as the project progressed. He wanted greater authenticity and continually looked for ways to achieve it. Pearce, too, is excellent, although he might have had more screen time. The French-born Taghmaoui has been the heavy in a number of terrorist-thrillers (including the recent Vantage Point), but here his character has more room to stretch beyond the stereotype. Daniels’ character is suggestive but not fleshed out enough to understand what’s really going on in his head. Is he a cynical individual, or does his indifference to consequences reflect the official attitude? I suspect the latter.
The action score, with a Middle Eastern flavor, is by Mark Kilian, who also scored the much more political and less successful Rendition.
Finally, the title is ambiguous. Who is the traitor? It depends on which side you’re viewing from. In a way, everyone is a traitor: to one’s friends, to one’s cause, to one’s faith. This is a film that asks what’s at stake for both sides, and to what extent the sacrifices also involve self-compromise. And by the way: It’s a heck of an action movie.
Rated PG-13 for intense violent sequences, thematic material and brief language.