Traitor
December 16th, 2008
I watched Traitor a few days ago and must admit I’m impressed. It seems Hollywood managed to upgrade their perspective about Islam –which seldom happens.
Traitor is what we can call a post-9/11 movie. We have muslims, a terrorist group, and FBI trying to stop a massive suicide attacks on US soil.
Very Hollywood-ish, heh?
But it’s different from other post-9/11 movies, such as The Kingdom (pretty lame), In The Valley of Elah (good), Lion for Lambs (lame), or Body of Lies (very entertaining).
Traitor tries to, at least to some extend, break the negative stereotype about muslim in the west. It tries to show that Islam has been hijacked by extremists –a simple fact ignorant westerners might choke down with difficulty.
General Info
Director: Jeffrey Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow, writer)
Story: Steve Martin
Starring: Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Said Taghamaoui
Release date: August 27, 2008
Running time: 114 minutes
The Story (dont worry, no spoiler. Well not much, I guess)
Traitor tells a story of Samir Horn, played by Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Crash), an American muslim born in Sudan who joined a fictional terrorist group called Al-Nathir.
Samir is a former US Special Forces Army sergeant. Highly trained in engineering and explosives. At first he just sold arms to Al-Nathir, but then he directly involved in their plot to launch massive suicide attacks on US soil.
Samir was pursued in numerous countries, especially by an FBI agent named Roy Clayton, played by Guy Pearce, who headed the counter-terrorism squad. Their cat-and-mouse game finally reached its climax in Hallifax, Canada.
But, as the plot develops, we will see who the real traitor is.
The Characters
The strength of this movie lies in characters. We have Samir, a devout muslim. He prays 5 times a day, fasts, doesnt want to drink alcohol (though he had to, ‘coz it’s an order), and when the burden of the world seemed to weigh on him, he turned to zikr –reciting the holy Quran.
Then we have Roy Clayton, a nice and sympathetic FBI man. A PhD in Arabic Studies, doesnt use violence in interrogation, understands that Islam literally means submission (to Allah), but is also very persistent in chasing Samir.
In one scene, when the two guys met in a basement (with Samir holding the gun), Clayton who apparently did a dig on the background of Samir’s father (a devout muslim chleric), asked Samir why he deviated so far from his father’s teachings.
Other character worthy of mentioning is Omar, Samir’s best friend in Al-Nathir. Omar is not a totally blind extremist. Sometimes he does question himself what actually they’re doing. In one scene, when Omar’s mood of deep thinking surfaced, he said:
Perhaps it’s true what they say. War is just the lesser Jihad. To resist temptation and live a righteous life, that is the greater Jihad.
(You rarely find such sentences in many post-9/11-Hollywood-terrorism-movies, do you?)
The Bottom line
Traitor is not a usual terrorism movie. It doesnt come up with an idea that muslims are terrorists and Islam inspires terrorism. It tries to differentiate between extremist and moderate muslims –while putting the true face of Islam on the latter.
Such a stance is of course relatively new in mainstream Hollywood movie. The fact that the film itself is quite entertaining make it more important to note.
This film received mixed reviews both from users and critics. There are also harsh criticism underlying the prejudice behind the concept of this movie. A critic from Washington Post even slammed the movie.
(Well I guess it cant be helped. It’s easier to formulate thoughts into simple category like Islam/terrorism, FBI/hero, mosque/exterimist, than trying to understand what Islam is).
But it doesnt mean there’s no criticism from muslim critic. Wajahat Ali, associate editor of altmuslim.com (a kinda newsblog muslim network), wrote in his review that while Traitor originally intended to show the sympathetic face of moderate muslim majority, on the contrary the film itself unintentionally showed that moderate muslim is only an aberration within mainstream Hollywood narrative.
He has a good point. But as one commentator said, basically it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
(and I agree with that)
In short, if you’re not a fan of You Dont Mess With Zohan (meaning you dont like junk movie), you might want to watch Traitor. It’s about time Hollywood make a more sophisticated movie about terrorism rather than the simple junk formula of Islam-arabs-mosques-then voila! here comes terrorists.
Other’s grade
Yahoo movies
IMDB: 7.3 out of 10 (7366 votes).
Rottentomatoes: 56% out of 100.
Metacritic: 60 out of 100 (based on 29 reviews).
My Grade
B
* image was taken from IMDB.com.
Leave a Reply