Traitor (***)

Directed by: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
Starring: Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Neal McDonough, Said Tachmaoui, Jeff Daniels
Seen: June 19th 2009

*** Out of ****

Traitor starts out with Samir Horn witnessing his father’s murder as a child, and then jumps to years later where we see Samir (Cheadle) as a devout Muslim adult, operating as an arms dealer in terrorist circles. Only one person at a big exchange trusts him, and all the rest blame him for what happens next: they are overrun by police, some shot, and some thrown in prison in Yemen.

In prison, Samir is subjected to violent inmates who try to control every single person to their own advantage, but Samir stands up to them in defence of the weak being picked on. Omar (Tachmaoui), one of Samir’s former detractors, sees that Samir shares his devout Muslim beliefs and is a good person, so when they escape, they take Samir with them, getting Samir “in” with the gang.

Meanwhile the FBI, in the form of agents Roy Clayton (Pearce) and Max Arthur (McDonough), are hot on Samir’s trail, and they’ve even visited him in prison, trying in vain to get him to swing since he also has an American passport. The closer they get to catching Samir, the harder it gets for Samir to maintain his cover, and as Samir assists Omar’s group in their terrorism, Carter (Daniels) assists Samir in planning the opposing side of the operations, planting bodies at bombings of empty buildings, for example, to make Samir’s attacks look legitimate.

Things get more and more complicated for Samir, and as they do, the viewer cannot help but wonder whether Samir is fighting for the right side (whichever side you might think it is). Traitor is about undercover operatives in action, but it is actually about so much more. What does it do to a person to have to lie about his convictions to get in with another group? How far can one person be pushed before he turns against those he started working for in the first place? How radical can or will such a turnaround be? How far must someone go to prove his loyalty to those he is trying to deceive?

All these questions confront you as you go along for quite a suspenseful ride in this almost documentary-like thriller. All the actors are convincing in their roles, with Cheadle an absolute standout as the conflicted but very effective operative, be it for the so-called good or bad guys. A quote near the end of the film also shakes those who cannot see Muslims as good people – it comes from the Koran and states that killing one man is as good as killing all of mankind. The film is very successful at portraying a difficult thought to even the most one-sided mind – the war on terror is against fundamentalist extremists who follow a perversion of their religion, and not against Muslims or Islam per se. The worst atrocities in mankind’s history have always been perpetrated in the name of religion, and the escalation of the fight against those extremists (on both sides) is what the world radically needs, even if it only starts with ideas of tolerance. In Traitor the fight is not between Christianity and Islam, it is between extremist and those who still believe in a better world for all.