Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Jihad for Dummies: Traitor

“Traitor,” an international espionage thriller written and directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff (better known as the guy who wrote the global warming thriller “The Day After Tomorrow”), pits Guy Pearce’s southern Baptist FBI man Roy Clayton against Don Cheadle’s devout Muslim, maybe renegade, former U.S. soldier Samir Horn in a cat and mouse game across several continents and 17 cities. The movie is loaded with misguided Muslims and Americans alike, all of them just trying to do the right thing and slaughtering innocents in the process, so it comes as no surprise that several of the crew (including DP J. Michael Muro) and Cheadle himself were involved in the faux-deep car wreck that was “Crash.” For the “Traitor” script is as jam-packed with simpleminded and heavy-handed exposition-posing-as-profound-thought as it is with suicide bombings and hand-to-hand combat action—all of it so painful to listen to and observe that I wanted to blow myself up during the first half. And I don’t even like virgins.

To read my review visit The House Next Door.

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