Atypical terrorism

The opening credits of Traitor give one that sinking feeling. It's clear that the film will be heading into overly familiar territory. The credits appear against a series of arabesque patterns to the doleful moan of a bansuri flute, which can only mean a traipse back to the Middle East for another attempt by Hollywood to spin violent dreams of terrorism.

The first scene that follows is another recent cinematic cliché - dateline Sudan in the '70s. A boy and his father pray toward Mecca together, which can only end badly for one or both of them. On cue, an explosion makes the father a martyr, as well as the psychological impetus for all that follows in his son's life. In other words, he will spawn blowback.

The next scene, too, can be easily ticked off as a given. One of the stars, in this case Don Cheadle, is found driving through the fairly modern streets of a Yemeni city. We quickly connect that Cheadle's character, Samir Horn, is the orphaned boy we saw in the first requisite scene. So far, so average.

From this establishing shot of Cheadle's Samir driving in Yemen (efficiently played by Morocco), we're led to a terrorists' compound, where Samir has arrived to deliver some Semtex. We learn from his host that he and Samir were brother Mujahideen in Afghanistan, where Samir was an expert on explosives.

Somewhere between his father's death in Sudan, and the struggle in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Samir lived in America with his American mother, where he acquired an American passport and joined the army (all of this seems a stretch considering Samir's age, but such are the script's demands).

Close to the compound, action of another sort is developing. Two FBI agents - interestingly out of their jurisdiction - are joining forces with a troop of Yemeni soldiers to raid the compound. The two agents couldn't be more different from each other. The head of the team, Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce), is a Southern Baptist intellectual who not only knows the Koran like his Bible, but actually speaks Arabic. His second, Max Archer (Neal McDonough), is a gung-ho know-nothing out for some action - which, of course, brings us to another cliché, the good cop and bad cop.

After the attack, Samir is rounded up with the rest of the survivors and taken into custody. Special agents Clayton and Archer try to appeal to Samir as an American to talk, something their prisoner refuses to do. Giving up on him, they fly back to Washington, leaving Samir to whatever fate awaits him in a dank Yemeni prison.

The other survivors of the compound, particularly the second in command, Omar (Said Taghmaoui), are suspicious of Samir, as they were suddenly attacked not long after he drove up with his Semtex. Yet, Samir will soon prove himself to be a good Muslim in their eyes, and be adopted by the surviving jihadists as one of their own.

A prison break will leave the rest of the film rushing madly between datelines: Chicago, Marseille, Toronto, Los Angeles, London, Nice, Halifax and far too many stops in between. A complex terrorism plot is developing, with Samir at the center of it.

Once Traitor settles in to being a suspense thriller, however, it becomes much less routine than you'd expect. In fact, the last quarter of the film is cleverly unpredictable, and truly suspenseful.

As with almost every film over these last eight years that has tried to examine Islamic terrorism, Traitor comes with liberal credentials. It, too, tries to stress the differences among Muslims to show that there isn't a religion-wide cult of death. Unlike The Kingdom, A Mighty Heart, The Kite Runner et al., Traitor refreshingly manages to accomplish this in a non-didactic way, and actually with some style.

The film contains much thoughtful, philosophical pondering on the subjects of the Abrahamic religions, morality and, that most brutal of Orwellian euphemisms, "collateral damage."

Director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who should perhaps be finally forgiven for having written the script for The Day After Tomorrow, manages to keep the action and the philosophy moving in tandem at a good clip, and provides a number of surprise twists along the way.

Still, were it not for the central performance of Cheadle's, Traitor could have easily slipped into being just a competent programmer. Cheadle's investment in exploring every facet of his conflicted character pays off handsomely, and the actor creates an extremely well-crafted bit of work. It's to Cheadle's great credit as a performer that he manages to win our interest, and even sympathy, while he's toiling away in a basement making bombs.

Taghmaoui's Omar is also wonderfully drawn, while the other actors, given much less to work with, nonetheless provide solid support, particularly Pearce.

There will be no escape soon from this genre of thriller. A spin through the actors' credits on the Internet Movie Database shows that all of Traitor's Arab, Indian and Pakistani actors, who have also popped up in The Kingdom and The Kite Runner, are slated for upcoming projects bearing titles like Mesocafe, The Green Zone and Mogadishu. With any luck, some of these will manage to rise above mere run-of-the-kill, as Traitor has.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at
ssilvis@praguepost.com