Review of Traitor (2008) by Peter C — 21 Apr 2016

It does live up to its billing of a tense high octane thriller at least initially but the lack of conviction to take sides even while dealing with a convinced protagonist hurts during many potentially flourishing moments. The movie slowly succumbs to a B-Movie feel in the second half though Cheadle gives a top performance.

Samir (Don Cheadle) is affected by West's act of aggression when he was young. He builds his life systematically to avenge his loss. An FBI agent Roy (Guy Pearce) puts pieces together of certain international events and zeros in on Samir. How Samir evades him and tries to carry his mission with a moral dilemma holding him back comprises the rest.

It boasts of an excellent screenplay initially carefully revealing pieces of a larger puzzle like any good thriller would. Unfortunately runs out of steam very soon making it a generic cat and mouse chase. Don Cheadle expectedly gives a humble yet powerful performance while Guy Pierce and his colleague resorts to a caricature of FBI agents what we have seen in many other flicks. Since a similar story is handled in so many ways in the recent times, it required something spectacular to standout but comes very short of what was required. Lacking these powerful moments makes the runtime longer than it already is. The moral dilemma and the perspective of West and East towards each other was portrayed promisingly at the start but gets repetitive and dragging at a certain point.

It never had the potential to hit big, but couldn't restrain to a simple smart thriller either.