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80The film is a genuinely gripping tale about international terrorism that hopscotches across three continents.
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If you're looking for a few hours of mindless, uncomplicated, air-conditioned escapism to get you through a hot late-summer's evening, I'd recommend you look some place other than Traitor.
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75The movie proceeds quickly, seems to know its subject matter, is fascinating in its portrait of the inner politics and structure of the terrorist group, and comes uncomfortably close to reality. But what holds it together is the Cheadle character.
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75Problems aside, this is a good, twisty, absorbing work.
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75The best end-of-August movie I've seen in years.
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75The film's greatest asset is its performances.
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75The film's a propulsive international espionage thriller, built on the hurry-scurry bones of the "Bourne" movies.
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75An uncommonly intelligent espionage thriller that explores the moral and ethical dilemmas faced by agents who go deep undercover in the service of their country.
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75A thriller that's frequently implausible but almost always thoughtful. It asks us to rethink the way we see Muslims
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75A tough, taut, mostly well-executed morality parable and thriller that explores some of the bitter ironies of this strange religious vendetta in which America unwittingly finds itself.
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75Without its mesmerizing lead performance, Traitor easily could have devolved into direct-to-DVD fodder.
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70A somber, absorbing and only moderately preposterous new thriller.
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63Traitor is "Syriana" for dummies, a globe-hopping, multi-character look at the war between America and Islamic terrorists that keeps things as relatively simple as an episode of 24. Not that there's anything wrong with that: 24 is a really good show. But it doesn't pretend to be something it's not, either.
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63Don Cheadle, wiry and wired, delivers an electrifying performance in Traitor.
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63Can't seem to decide whether it wants to be an edge-of-the-seat action thriller or a more contemplative and intellectual drama about religion and terrorism. Somehow, in trying to have it both ways, it doesn't completely succeed at either.
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60Nachmanoff fills the movie with a sense of gripping, '70s-style grittiness that helps undercut the web-of-evil tone.
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60Pearce may be the other big star in Traitor, and while his performance is serviceable, it doesn't cut deeply. Taghmaoui, as a radical motivated by moral certainty, is the real actor to watch here.
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60Brandishes physical verisimilitude and intelligent seriousness but proves unable to really get inside its chameleon-like central character.
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58Its easy to see why Don Cheadle wanted to play Samir Horn, the hero of the post-9/11 thriller Traitor. Cheadles face is basically a perfect delivery system for woe, sadness and internal conflict. And Samir a deep-cover operative trying to infiltrate a terrorist outfit has to make brutal Sophies Choices roughly three times a day.
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58It's Cheadle's rich emotionality and sense of humor that have gone seriously missing in Traitor.
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The film is stylishly shot, although the current action-movie look might be dated in a few years.
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50Traitor becomes too busy, ultimately frustrating, and never delivers on its tantalizing promise of offering a little insight into terrorists' motives – and it's even got an inside man.
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50A slippery entertainment that's all feints and few punches thrown at a fight card of indistinguishable terrorists, Muslim and otherwise.
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The movie's first hour is well-done, but realism and insight go out the window as soon as Samir crosses the U.S. border.
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Ultimately, Traitor is a movie at war with itself.
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50Traitor traffics in the cliches of the terrorist chase film -- including the usual stereotypes of Muslims -- while trying not to succumb to outright bigotry.
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50Based on a story by Steve Martin of all people, the script seldom rises above formula (Guy Pearce and Neal McDonough are especially ill served as a pair of starchy FBI agents), but its respectful treatment of Islam is both unusual and welcome.
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Cheadle's innate goodness is the film's main dilemma, since the truth under the story's surface (which we won't reveal here) can be contained for only so long, and with ever-diminishing dramatic returns.
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40The 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.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 22 out of 22
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Mixed: 0 out of 22
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