Traitor.

"Traitor, a somber, absorbing and only moderately preposterous new thriller written and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, manages an impressive feat of economy, condensing a vast and sometimes contradictory compendium of post-9/11 fears and anxieties into 110 swift minutes," writes AO Scott in the New York Times.

"In one sense, Traitor is precisely the kind of movie about global terrorism that everyone feared two years ago," writes Martin Tsai in the New York Sun. "The movie serves up the hottest potatoes in world politics as if they were freezer-packed french fries, filling blanks in the espionage-thriller formula with touchy subjects. One can almost picture Nachmanoff at a meeting with studio executives, pitching the film as United 93 meets Syriana meets The Bourne Identity. Indeed, Traitor is as formulaic as they come, even if it serviceably measures up to all of these predecessors in terms of sheer entertainment value."

Updated through 8/30.

"[Don] Cheadle, in movies like Hotel Rwanda and Crash, has become the go-to guy for roles that require bringing deep-rooted internal moral conflicts to the surface, and it's remarkable that he can play these parts so frequently without making them feel tired or programmed," writes Stephanie Zacahrek in Salon. "Cheadle is deeply attuned to the cerebral and the emotional; in fact, he seems to make no distinction between them."

"Traitor is a movie about some of the most terrifying and inescapable facts of our times, and I walked out of it whistling and chewing gum," writes Steven Boone. "What's next? I could give you an intricate, sequence by sequence breakdown of why it is so forgettable despite its memorable performances and action cinematography, but I'm tired, man. Tired of writing the same review for each of Ho'wood's precision engineered attempts at serious fun."

Also at the House Next Door, Lauren Wissot finds "the story concept (originating with executive producer Steve Martin!) is as complex and interesting as the script is clichéd and tedious."

"To its credit, the movie moves swiftly and purposefully enough to briefly distract from its own hackneyed conventionality," writes Jonathan Kiefer. "But disappointments and doubts can't be held off for long."

"If the chess metaphor around which most of the story seems to have been constructed around weren't facile enough, the laughably explosive conclusion to a series of mass terrorist attacks within the borders of the United States pretty much confirms Traitor as an intellectual and philosophical lost cause," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

"The movie's first hour is well-done, but realism and insight go out the window as soon as Samir crosses the US border - oh so easily - to set in motion one last big terror plot, a plan that actually calls to mind the scheme from Don Siegel's far superior 1977 thriller Telefon, in which a rogue KGB agent travels across America activating deep-cover Russian agents," writes Chuck Wilson in the Voice. "Nachmanoff has devised a nifty last-minute twist to the concept, but he appears to take little pleasure in the telling—almost as if he's embarrassed to be having fun with a subject as serious as terror."

David Denby in the New Yorker: "The filmmakers, I think, got in over their heads and couldn't decide whether they were making an action thriller or a drama of conscience; they wound up flubbing both."

"Problems aside, this is a good, twisty, absorbing work," argues the Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips.

"Today's global state of affairs has resulted in a handful of interesting films, ranging from the moving In the Valley of Elah and Stop-Loss to the satirical Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay to the metaphorical The Dark Knight," writes Alonso Duralde at MSNBC. "These are the exceptions, sadly, with most of the ripped-from-the-headlines movies being along the lines of the overwrought and dull Rendition and Lions for Lambs. Toss Traitor into the nice-try bin with these latter disappointments."

Cristy Lytal talks with Guy Pearce for the Los Angeles Times.

Updates: "Post-2001, the likes of TV's 24 and Sleeper Cell, and film's Jason Bourne franchise, have tapped into both our political climate and pop culture zeitgeist, into a globe-trotting, gun-toting fear of the here and there and always now," writes William Goss at Cinematical. "Jeffrey Nachmanoff's Traitor feels like the first film that has itself been directly spawned in the wake of those successes, as opposed to merely bolstered by it, and while it may overtake, say, Vantage Point in terms of plausible plotting and worldly knowledge, it remains a film that is good enough to grasp the bar and yet not quite enough to raise it."

"Traitor is essentially two films," writes Nathan Rabin. "One is a superbly acted, suspenseful character study about a man whose faith pulls him in antithetical directions. The other is a much more generic, forgettable cat-and-mouse yarn about dogged G-men pursuing elusive prey."

Annsley Chapman talks with Cheadle for Vulture.

"It's easy to see why Cheadle wanted to play Samir," notes the Oregonian's Mike Russell. "Cheadle's face is basically a perfect delivery system for woe, sadness and gut-wrenching internal conflict. And Samir - a deep-cover operative trying to infiltrate the highest ranks of that terrorist outfit - has to make brutal Sophie's Choices roughly three times a day."

Update, 8/28: Online listening tip. Cheadle's a guest on The Treatment.

Update, 8/29: "When watching Traitor, the viewer is overcome by the weirdest urge: You want to will the movie to become better than it really is," writes Paul Constant in the Stranger. "But the fact is that Traitor is just not a good movie, and all the Cheadle in the world can't save it."

Update, 8/30: "One of Traitor's tragic flaws is Hollywood's century old myopia, placing a shining minority citizen amidst a sea of his depraved brethren," writes Wajahat Ali in the Huffington Post. "The 'Good Darkie' then battles for the souls and minds of the 'Evil Darkies.' Cheadle's Samir is a devout Muslim whose religious discipline is displayed continuously and even admired by other characters. He prays five times a day; he fasts; he abstains from alcohol and so forth. Meanwhile, every other Muslim character seems transplanted from dated 80s action movies and True Lies."

Posted by dwhudson at August 27, 2008 1:14 AM