Daily Plastic: Traitor

Movie	Our Take	Other Takes
Traitor Trailer . IMDB		Two films in one: Throughout his career, Don Cheadle has proved himself a superlative minimalist... That skill is put to good use in the international thriller Traitor.... Traitor is essentially two films. 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. Nathan Rabin Onion AV Club Traitor comes close to saying something serious, but it slips away into nonsense.... 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. David Denby The New Yorker [Cheadle's character, Samir] is, in other words, an elegantly conceived and suavely played construct, a theoretical being born out of a very real political conflict. Samir, enigmatic and quiet though he is, has less in common with Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne than he does with some of the cold-war specters dreamed up by John le Carré in his prime. Samir's doubleness is built into his biography, and whatever choice he makes is likely to constitute some form of betrayal. A.O. Scott New York Times

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