Traitor Review

A wise director once said, “If you can get Don Cheadle in your movie, get Don Cheadle in your movie.” Even if he should have added “without a cockney accent”, you’ve got to appreciate the sentiment, and Cheadle is as magnetic as ever here as Samir Horn, a weapons authority with enough red flags in his profile to light up the CIA’s Christmas tree (if they were allowed one). Samir, born in Sudan and a devout Muslim, is now a US citizen and former Special Forces explosives expert — which would be fine if he hadn’t recently been caught selling C-4 to terrorists. Making the arrest are two shrewd FBI agents played by Guy Pearce and Neal McDonough, the former somewhat more PC in his world outlook than the latter, and who suspects that Samir is more than he appears. The real question, though, true to the best of the genre, rests in the motives of his superiors.Traitor does suffer from the occasional plothole and patch of wooden dialogue, but when Nachmanoff finds the groove it displays a knack for solid characterisation and expertly timed twists, at times achieving ‘is he?/isn’t he?’ qualities to match the likes of, say, No Way Out. A pity, then, that it can never quite sustain its momentum, and a shame that someone felt a need to ‘sex up’ the story with a few too many action set-pieces (which roll into a clunky coda), but seeing the FBI’s powers of technology-fuelled deduction fall short of the usual Hollywood benchmark of miraculous is a welcome touch of restraint.