Movies have dealt with different types of terrorists over the years. Those types of movies have the potential to be controversial and they won't appeal to everyone even though they can be very good when they are done well. I was interested in seeing Traitor after I first saw a trailer for it.

A terrorist group was behind bombings in several cities in Europe. Even though they had no jurisdiction, the FBI was unofficially involved in a raid in Yemen that resulted in several arrests. Roy Clayton and Max Archer continued to try to track down the group once they were back in the United States. After another bombing, the little bit of evidence they had seemed to point to Samir Horn being involved. Samir was a former member of the U.S. Special Forces with explosives training who had been born in the Sudan and was Muslim.

Traitor was not an action movie even though there were one or two scenes that contained some action in them. That is bound to disappoint some viewers, especially since I know I have seen a commercial on television that mentioned that the movie was this year's The Bourne Identity. There was only one minor thing that could possibly be considered similar about the two movies, and that would be stretching it. Unfortunately, this is yet another time when a movie was promoted wrong. That just sets up the potential for people to be disappointed with the movie. I was surprised when I learned that Steve Martin actually came up with the idea for the movie originally. He didn't write the script, but he was one of the producers.

The plot for Traitor seemed to be very straightforward at first. As things progressed, it became clear that there was a bit more going on than there appeared to be at first. The plot itself really wasn't complicated, but some of the situations presented in the movie were. One character even said how something was complicated at one point. The movie did move with a somewhat slower pace that was needed to properly set up the characters and what was going on. The slower pace might bother some people, especially if they had been expecting more of an action movie. There was a bit of mystery with certain things that were going on that kept me very interested.

Terrorism is not a fun subject and is very touchy to many people, especially considering what has been going on around the world in the last several years. A lot of time was focused on a few of the different terrorists and what they were doing, including recruiting new people to take part in their missions. Several of the scenes with the terrorists were upsetting to some degree and this movie won't appeal to everyone. I don't know how accurate the things with the terrorists were or if any of the groups actually do things like were in the movie, but it did seem realistic and believable. I did think that aspect of the movie was handled well. Some terrorist attacks happened during the course of the movie and there was some violence in the movie. The violence wasn't that graphic though.

Another subject that is touchy to many people is religion, and that also came up throughout Traitor. The terrorists were using their religion as a reason for what they were doing. It did seem like they twisted things to suit their own needs. It was briefly touched on how Muslims are singled out at times or even discriminated against without that being fully explored. One of the FBI agents, Roy, had studied Arabic cultures in college and was a bit more open minded than some other people since he didn't assume that every Muslim was a terrorist. It was also shown that a Muslim - I'm not saying who specifically because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet - who was very religious hated terrorism and felt that the terrorists were traitors to the religion. The fact that several things related to the Muslim religion was shown in the movie might bother some viewers.

A lot remained unknown about most of the characters in Traitor. That didn't bother me since sharing more about some of them would have made certain things known too soon. Roy and Max were the only FBI agents shown more than once or twice. The two men seemed to work together fine even though they didn't always agree on how to handled certain things. Basically nothing personal about Max was shared and the only personal things shared about Roy were that his father was a preacher and he studied Arabic cultures in college. Guy Pearce and Neal McDonough were fine in the parts, with Pearce getting slightly more to do. He had much larger parts in The Count of Monte Cristo and Memento.

Samir had been born in Sudan where he lived for several years before going to live with his mother in Chicago. As an adult he had been in the special forces and trained with explosives. It did seem like he was conflicted about things at times. I thought that Don Cheadle was very good in the part. This was different from the characters I've seen him play in Volcano and Ocean's Eleven as well as the two sequels. Jeff Daniels turned up just a few times as an agent involved with what was going on.

Omar was one of the terrorists that Samir was connected to. Omar was one of the more intelligent men, so he was higher up in the group. He seemed to really believe what he was saying when talking about his beliefs. Said Taghmaoui was good in the part. The only other thing I've seen him in is Vantage Point. Fareed was further up in the group and supplying money for the missions. He tended to be far from any danger and didn't have a problem deciding to send others to die for the missions.

Main Cast

Don Cheadle - Samir
Jeff Daniels - Carter
Neal McDonough - Max Archer
Guy Pearce - Roy Clayton

Jeffrey Nachmanoff - Director

Traitor was a very good movie that deserves to be seen, though the subject matter isn't going to appeal to many people.

Don Cheadle Movie Reviews
After the Sunset ~ Ocean's Eleven ~ Ocean's Twelve ~ Ocean's Thirteen ~ Rush Hour 2 ~ Volcano ~

Recommended: Yes