A solid, intelligent international thriller showcasing the underrated Don Cheadle in an intriguing and morally ambiguous role, “Traitor” is the best end-of-August movie I’ve seen in years.
With first-rate performances, a taut directorial debut by Jeffrey Nachmanoff and nail-biting suspense, “Traitor” is apparently being cast into Hollywood’s traditional dumping ground because its subject matter (terrorism) is now palatable to US audiences only in the context of comic-book blockbusters.
This is the sort of movie best approached without prior knowledge; even the trailer manages to give away a crucial third-act twist (devised by Steve Martin!) that surprised even a seen-it-all type like myself.
So I’ll be more vague than usual. With great subtlety, Cheadle plays Samir Horn, who watched as his father, a minister, was blown up by a car bomb in Samir’s native Sudan. Raised in the States by his American mother, Samir served in special services in Afghanistan, where he began to embrace his Muslim roots.
His current sympathies are unclear. Samir lands in a prison in Yemen after attempting to sell explosives to local terrorists. He is approached by a pair of FBI agents looking to make a deal of their own.
Samir spurns their offer of freedom in exchange for information, and participates in a spectacular escape engineered by Omar (the excellent French-Moroccan actor Said Taghmaoui), who is part of an international terrorist ring.
Soon the FBI agents – the hard-driving Max (Neal McDonough) and the more philosophical Roy (Guy Pearce) – are hot on the trail of the elusive Samir, who’s linked to a train attack in Spain and the bombing of the US embassy in Nice on the French Riviera.
I won’t say more about the plot – which includes stops in London, Toronto, Nova Scotia and Chicago – except to note that Jeff Daniels has a crucial supporting role as a shadowy government operative, and that the highly suspenseful climax revolves around a plot to blow up 30 cross-country buses over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Writer-director Nachmanoff (co-credited as screenwriter for “The Day After Tomorrow”) keeps things at a steady boil and avoids the kind of over-acting that pops up in many thrillers like this. Only a subplot involving Samir’s ex-girlfriend (Archie Panjabi) being grilled by the FBI seems misjudged.
Unlike many contemporary thrillers, “Traitor” doesn’t have an overt political agenda. Depending on your point of view, it can be viewed as an infomercial for the Department of Homeland Security or as a cautionary tale about battling Islamic terrorism without trying to understand its roots.
TRAITOR
Twisty late-summer sleeper. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (intense violence, torture, profanity). At the Tower East, the Chelsea, the Union Square, others.