More about this DVD  •  DVD Info  •  Movie Main Page  •  Message Board

Actor Don Cheadle has continued to gravitate towards interesting projects since his double duty as producer and star of the Oscar-winning Crash. His latest, Traitor, falls in line with similar work he’s done in films like Hotel Rwanda and Talk to Me. Never one to pick his roles based on their potential box-office success, Cheadle seems more interested in playing characters that are both morally ambiguous and yet remain compelling enough to resonate with an audience. That his talents allow him to disappear into such roles seemingly without much effort only makes his movies more intriguing and Traitor is one of the better examples of a gripping story done right. It’s also a testament to the filmmakers that a contemporary plot based around a suspected Muslim terrorist comes across as both genuine and credible, without the usual trappings of a glossed-over Hollywood production.

That being said, it’s interesting to note that the original premise and story for Traitor was developed by none other than Steve Martin – yes, the Steve Martin – who devised the initial idea while working on Bringing Down the House. As a longtime fan of Martin’s original concepts from Roxanne to Bowfinger, I was frankly a bit surprised he was involved in the production at all and assumed the Steve Martin credited as writer and executive producer was someone else who shared the same name. But given that he’s matured as a “serious” writer with thought-provoking essays in publications like The New Yorker, I can understand and appreciate his participation. Of course, the final screenplay is credited to director Jeffrey Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow) and Cheadle himself is said to have made some contributions to the script as well, so Martin’s original idea was obviously tweaked and reworked before going before the cameras.

Cheadle plays Samir Horn, a devout American Muslim and former U.S. Special Operations officer who was trained by the Army’s Special Forces as an explosives expert. When Samir gets caught trying to sell explosives to Islamic terrorists in Yemen and ends up in prison, he catches the attention of FBI agents Roy Clayton (Guy Pearce) and Max Archer (Neal McDonough), who suspect he’s been involved with other bombings. Even though the FBI agents offer to spring Samir from jail, he refuses to cooperate with them. While in prison Samir befriends a man named Omar (Said Taghmaoui), who becomes something of a protector and eventually takes him along during an elaborate prison escape planned by his cohorts on the outside. Now indebted to Omar and his friends, Samir eventually agrees to help them plan a terrorist bombing at the American Consulate in Nice, France – even though these fellow Muslims forsake their own beliefs in order to “fit in.”

Meanwhile agents Clayton and Archer start getting intelligence information that suggests their old friend Samir is free from prison and once again involved in providing explosives for the job in Nice and another failed attempt in London. But the more Archer digs into Samir’s past, the more questions arise as to his real motives. While Samir clearly appears to be associating with and helping known terrorist factions, his deeply held Muslim beliefs and his continued status as an American citizen seem to contradict everything he’s doing. When Archer finally tracks Samir down during a return visit to the United States, he starts to piece together the complex nature of Samir’s ultimate mission – something that even the FBI has difficulty deciphering.

To go into much more detail about the plot would ruin a couple of well-executed twists and turns that I suspected but didn’t fully see coming. Suffice to say that Samir is not what he appears to be and there are others who get involved with the complex cat-and-mouse game playing roles within roles just so they can “fit in.” In fact, the entire movie is based around this idea of perception versus reality, and how someone can either be wrongfully labeled as a terrorist just because they’re a Muslim or, by the same token, considered an upstanding, law-abiding American just because they work for the FBI. A key character named Carter (Jeff Daniels in another great supporting turn) holds vital information that, if revealed, will put lives at risk.

What’s most refreshing about Traitor in the wake of so many recent preachy political and war-based thrillers is how it plays everything straight down the middle without choosing sides. It also eschews the typical Hollywood stereotype of all Muslims as fanatical terrorists in favor of a more realistic depiction of those who support such activity and those who clearly do not. Likewise, the FBI agents can’t all be defined in black-and-white – there’s subtle shades of grey in all they do to achieve their ultimate goal. Cheadle gives another great nuanced performance that starts out a bit wooden and emotionless, by design, and then becomes much more compelling and riveting as the movie progresses. The underused Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential) is also perfectly cast as the religious FBI agent who understands and appreciates Samir’s religious convictions. And the similarly underrated and aforementioned Jeff Daniels adds another in a long string of unforgettable supporting roles to his credits that include such films as The Lookout and The Squid and the Whale.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

In one of the first examples of this I’ve ever seen, for some odd reason the film’s original 2.40:1 aspect ratio disappointingly has been cropped and reformatted to fill the DVD’s 1.78:1 anamorphic video frame, even though the concurrent BD release is presented in the correct theatrical aspect ratio. I hope this isn’t a new trend of reformatting films to fit the widescreen television frame in an attempt to appease the same people who complained about the annoying “black bars” on letterboxed movies. Despite this obvious aberration of the director’s original vision, the transfer is good and provides a decent level of detail. The movie’s palette remains rather bland and colorless, by design, so although the color balance is solid, it all looks a bit muted and desaturated. Black levels are deep and consistent. Detail levels are good enough to reveal the textured and cracked walls of the Yemen prison where Samir is first incarcerated and also the various striped and polka-dot patterns in Clayton’s ties. Flesh tones all look natural and nicely-rendered and there are no signs of compression artifacts, black crush, mosquito noise, or edge halos. Overall, a good but flawed video presentation.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

The lone, lossy English 5.1 track is one of the beefier and more aggressive Dolby Digital tracks I’ve heard of late, boasting a nice level of high end and deep, booming bass. From the unexpected car explosion during the opening flashback sequence when Samir sees his father killed to subsequent bombings, the sound mix provides a full and discrete surround experience with great front directional effects, nice ambient surround content, and consistent use of the LFE channel to deliver those wall-rumbling explosions. There’s a great sequence during Samir’s ultimate capture in a terrorist raid early on when bullets ricochet through all five channels and pan from side to side. Dialogue remains clear through the center-channel and the original score by Mark Kilian (Rendition) is given a nice soundstage through all six channels. Overall, a very good audio presentation.

The optional subtitles are in English SDH and Spanish.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Traitor comes to DVD with a rather lean collection of bonus material. First up is a feature-length running audio commentary by writer/director Jeffrey Nachmanoff and actor Don Cheadle. Nachmanoff seems to take the lead on this session and provides some background information on the production and the shoot itself, but tends to lapse into simply describing where each scene was shot and how long it took to film. Cheadle is both complimentary and gracious in his comments about working with other actors and his director, but he doesn’t offer a lot of insight about the actual acting or shooting process from his own perspective, either. As the track progresses he’s relegated to simply answering Nachmanoff’s questions about whether he recollected filming certain scenes, which gets a bit boring. There are also long periods of silence during the latter half. Overall, it’s a disappointing and not very informative track.

The DVD includes two brief featurettes beginning with Action! The Stunts and Special Effects of Traitor (4:40), which offers some behind-the-scenes footage of how the film’s stunts were staged along with on-camera interviews with director Jeffrey Nachmanoff, stunt coordinator Philippe Guegan and star Don Cheadle.

International Espionage: An In-Depth Look at Traitor’s Exotic Locations (5:14) offers similar interviews with Nachmanoff, Cheadle, Guy Pearce, and other cast members discussing what it was like shooting in Morocco, which doubled for many of the film’s locations, along with France, England, and Canada.

The disc also includes the original theatrical trailer for Traitor, along with the trailers for Righteous Kill, Henry Poole is Here, The Visitor and Sleepwalking.

The 114-minute film is divided into twenty chapters.

DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

No ROM extras have been included.