February 16th, 2009
By Eddy
Traitor’s premise and trailer had me thinking that maybe this will be something more than the most spy/suspense thrillers that have come out in the last couple of years, movies such as Syriana, The Constant Gardner, The Interpreter and The Good Sheppard etc. While some of these movies have been critically acclaimed and have even garnered some awards they are mainly characterized by slow burning plots and sometimes surprisingly boring dialogue. Action is usually very sporadic and “realistic” and there is usually some social or political moral that the director is trying to convey such as the war in the Middle East is due to oil, and oil companies are bad.
Not to say that any of these movies suck, but I am getting tired of seeing movies that say, “Oh, being a spy is super boring, sometimes you don’t do things for a long time and then suddenly crazy stuff starts flying out of the wood work.” I just wish that they would make up their mind and either be an action movie or a drama, and not try to be both.
I know that this is a reaction to all the “Bourne” and Mission Impossible action movies and the like where one man kills an entire country with a gum wrapper and a Trapper Keeper notebook. I came into the movie hoping that “Traitor” would buck a couple of these trends. The trailer for the movie made the film out to be almost a black Bourne Identity with super action moments showing Don Cheadle (the explosives expert in the “Ocean’s” movies) kicking some butt. I should have heeded the warnings, Don Cheadle has never really been an action movie actor (or at least not a lead in one), and with movies such as Hotel Rwanda on his resume, there was likely some pressure to beef up the drama and the character so that he could actually act instead of move from one action scene to another.
Well mission accomplished, the movie sucked, but there wasn’t too much hope for this movie in the first place.
Let me try to explain the plot.
Samir Horn (Don Cheadle), a devout American Muslim, and a former Special Forces expert in explosives (what’s up with Don and explosives) has been linked to a couple of terrorist bombings by the FBI. Guy Pearce is the FBI agent in charge of capturing him before he commits another terrorist act. The audience is left wondering whether Samir is really a terrorist or good guy. Obviously he is a good guy, but the director wants the audience to stew in their racist juices.
The movies director Jeffery Nachmanoff also gives us a glimpse of the world of the terrorist cell showing that there are two types of terrorist: those that do it because of their beliefs and those who only look to profit from these extremist.
The profiteers are usually the higher ups and are purposely characterized as pompous, rich and very urbane in nature, the exact person a middle to low income American movie watcher is trained to hate.
Of course, I hated the crap out of the bad guys, I have been conditioned well. Oh yeah, the movie also paints any Muslim in the U.S. as a possible sleeper terrorist, just waiting to blow themselves us and kill you and your entire family. I am sure that American Muslims loved this movie.
Unfortunately, all my initial goodwill for the movie was shot down about 20 minutes into the film as I was figuring out every single plot point before it even happened. I even considered just turning the movie off, but I suffered through it for the sake of my readers.
I knew you would appreciate it.
Cheadle phones the movie in and when he begins to speak Arabic or Yemenese you can tell by his accent immediately that he’s an American, and frankly if I was a terrorist I wouldn’t have trusted him at all. I just could not believe him as an Islamic terrorist or an American ex Special Forces guy, leaving him basically nowhere. Also, all the points that the Director was trying to shove down our throats about Islam and terrorist was so heavy handed and blatant that I forgot to try to enjoy the movie and was consumed more with why the hell the director sucked so much.
“Yes, I got the message, Terrorist are bad, people who are Islamic are not all terrorist, but 9 out 10 really are, and they are willing to kill every American man, woman and child…” I am not an idiot! Stop all the stupid messages and morals. I was half expecting the ending to show a brown hand and a white hand shaking as the final scene, signifying the end of the war between Christianity and Islam and a new world of tolerance and love…as long as all the people with authority and power are white and all the bad guys were easily identifiable by their color and dress and are given a thorough pat down and incarcerated immediately. Most of the characters were stereotypes and badly drawn, including Cheadle’s character, who was a stereotype by being the exact opposite of the stereotypes.
Other than the racism and fire and brimstone alarm ringing; everything about the movie was boring and grey with no real distinguishing features, the action scenes and dialogue were extremely forgettable and the experience was as thrilling as going to the laundry and washing your clothes. If that doesn’t tell you what I think about the movie I don’t know what will.
I just read on IMDB that Steve Martin came up with this movie while filming Bringing Down the House…bad movie begets another bad movie. You know if Steve Martin is the creator you aren’t really going to get into the nitty gritty of Islam and Terrorists. I can imagine Martin in between his latte and hammering out how many prat falls and bad jokes are going to be in the next Pink Panther movie deciding it would be great to see a movie about Islamic terrorist and a character (one of those minorities) that is muslim but is on the side of the good guys (Who are the good guys you ask? Well it’s America of course).
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