You have to feel a little sorry for Don Cheadle. The guy is a fantastic actor but it appears his career will be relegated to being a supporting actor. I doesn’t appear he has what the majority of the general public is looking for in terms of a leading man. Of course, us movie buffs love to see him leading a film, just like we would love to see great actors such as Cheadle’s Traitor co-star Guy Pearce in more leading roles. Too bad when you say Guy Pearce and Don Cheadle in a group of friends only the hardcore film fanatics will recognize the names. It’s also too bad Traitor isn’t going to up their profiles.
It’s not like Traitor is a bad film, it’s just that it is a film we have seen over and over again with a little bit of FBI vs. terrorist cat and mouse game guiding the plot. Cheadle plays the mouse in this game with the desire to put an end to one major terrorist being the overall goal. Pearce plays the “catty” FBI agent who ends up linking Cheadle’s character to a variety of terrorist bombings and a prison break in Yemen. Of course the supposedly intriguing piece to Cheadle’s character is his United States military background before he went off the grid and turned up with close connections and terrorist ties. Typically hanging out with the bad guy makes you the bad guy. If you think really hard in the first 15 minutes of the film you should have it all figured out if you haven’t done so already.
There are a few twists and turns as writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff has certainly stepped up his game since co-writing The Day After Tomorrow, but outside of a couple of great lines you may hear in any satirical political conversation nothing is all that surprising in this film. Cheadle is perfectly fine as Samir and it is good to see Pearce on the big screen for the first time since I saw Factory Girl in 2006, but none of that makes this film anything more than slightly above average.
Pearce is seen on screen so little nowadays it is unfortunate when his last film (Death Defying Acts) was basically abandoned by the Weinsteins and this film turns out to be so vanilla. With several films planned to be released this year with Pearce set to co-star you would think I may be interested, but all of his roles are so small they don’t give this great actor any real opportunity to shine.
Jeff Daniels gets limited time as some kind of secret agent man and Neal McDonough once again has me scratching my head as to why directors keep casting this man as some kind of bad ass. McDonough’s performance does become slightly subdued following his character’s introduction, but those first few moments were enough to see him as every other character he plays.
Overall, the best way to enjoy Traitor is on a Friday or Saturday night as a rental with your boyfriend or girlfriend. It will make for a couple of hours of entertainment and you will forget it shortly after you return it to the store.
C+
