Those post 9/11 thrillers just keep on coming. Hot on the heels of Body Of Lies, Vantage Point, Rendition, The Kingdom and the rest is this one, with Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Oceans 11) playing a Sudan-born American Muslim, who may or may not be a dangerous Jihadist bent on blowing up the Western world (it won’t take a supergenius to suss things out long before the ‘bombshell’ moment).
Writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff riffs heavily but still fairly superficially on the complexities of Islam, coaxing a committed, well-controlled performance from Cheadle in the process. Guy Pearce looks less comfortable, spouting a number of fromage-laden ‘here’s what the screenwriter is trying to say’ soundbites ("Religions have many faces…") as he doggedly tracks his prey from Yemen, across Europe and on to the US.
Despite its predictability and sometimes clunky dialogue, Traitor proves to be a tense, engrossing ride – you’ll know roughly how it will end, but you’ll still want to see exactly how it plays out and who’s left standing. While many of these kinds of films focus squarely on those attempting to thwart terror cells from the outside, this one intriguingly puts its emphasis on the politics and relationships within them and that’s what just about elevates it out of the mire.
Still, there’s a lingering feeling that unless someone has something new to say, it’s high time Hollywood gave the earnest-but-unspectacular terror dramas a rest.
