Susan Granger’s review of “Traitor” (Focus Features)
This top-notch, intelligent espionage thriller slipped in under the wire without much fanfare.
When he was a child in Sudan, Samir Horn (Don Cheadle) watched in horror as his father died in a car bomb attack. Raised in the United States, Samir is a devout Muslim who’s tragically caught between traditional Islam and loyalty to the West. His sympathy for the Afghani Muhajadeen lands him in prison in Yemen, where he’s befriended by Omar (Said Taghmaoui) a Swiss-educated jihadist who arranges their escape and introduces Samir to the Muslim fanatic Fareed (Aly Khan).
Two diligent F.B.I. agents, Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) and Max Archer (Neal McDonough) are aware of his maneuvers yet unable to discern where his allegiances are. Trained by U.S. Special Forces, Samir’s an explosives expert whom they suspect is directly involved in a suicide bombing on Spain’s Costa del Sol and a fatal attack on the U.S. consulate in Nice, France. And they’re right. But that’s just the first of many complex layers within the enigmatic character of Samir, who has secret meetings with a shadowy CIA agent (Jeff Daniels). Delving deeper, Clayton and Archer uncover Samir’s participation in an insidious plot to blow up 30 cross-country buses in America’s heartland during the Thanksgiving holidays.
Written and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff (“The Day After Tomorrow”), based on a story by Steve Martin and Nachmanoff, it’s filled with a dramatic sense of ambiguity, reminiscent of “Syriana” and “Babel,” heightened by J. Michael Muro’s verite-style cinematography and Billy Fox’s edgy editing. Wiry Don Cheadle (“Hotel Rwanda,” “Crash”) adroitly anchors the complex geopolitical drama, embodying its moral and ethical dilemmas. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 0, “Traitor” is a tense, unpredictable, intriguing 8. Terrorism weaves a tangled web of conspiracy.
