Through Cheadle’s bland acting, Samir is a less-than-intriguing cipher.The role is such a conceit that Cheadle has no re alpolitik (anti-imperialism, racial-resentment) to draw from; he’s just an unfathomably “good” man, not a tired, lost, conflicted soul like Richard Burton portrayed so memorably in The Spy Who Came in from The Cold.The film’s superfi cial complexity matches the campaign poster, which sells Cheadle’s baleful face— his sorrowful intelligence—as a contemp rary black male icon. Cheadle is another figure of the new post-racial, Obama-era uncertainty about black identity. Samir’s dealings with a global underground terrorist network pre supposes Third World dissention: He makes sarcastic barbs against U.S. agents— Guy Pearce as an American Southerner re pairing the KKK atrocities he witnessed as a child; Jeff Daniels as a principled covert operative; Neal McDonough as a conserva tive hothead—while simultaneously pon dering solidarity with Muslim extremists (especially Said Taghmaoui as Omar).
When Samir quotes Martin Luther King Jr. (“If a man hasn’t discovered something he’s willing to die for, he isn’t fit to live”), the Muslim terrorists laugh at his senti mentality.
It dovetails Obama’s refusal to mention MLK at the Democratic conven tion.That reticence—caught between cau tious political strategy and War on Terror cynicism—is the movie’s most realistic as pect. Cheadle takes the easy way out: Critic Richard Torres calls it a Wesley Snipes role; I call it a Clooney.
Nothing in Traitor is as offensive as Julia Loktev’s Day Night Day Night, the re cent mind-of-a-terrorist drama that imag ined Armageddon in Times Square—the ultimate guilty-Liberal death wish. Martin is conscientious yet too timid to dare inject the patriotic fervor Samir’s story demands.
Instead, the sub-Munich, Bourne-style sus pense plays with the notion that twisted re sentment might drive Samir to the dark side, while also apologizing for the crazed vengeance of anti-American terrorists.
Attempting to have it both ways (lib eral license and conservative resistance), Martin sentimentalizes Samir as Every man in the ruthless world of espionage and global politics. (“They used us for our faith” he tells Omar.) Martin sacrifices tough satire for apolitical piety. Traitor could have been called Patriot, but the lat ter notion is unfashionable.
> Traitor
Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff Running Time: 113 min.
Don Cheadle stars in Traitor.
