Muslims in trouble

In Traitor, a grim-faced Don Cheadle is Samir Horn, a devout Muslim born in Sudan and educated in America who moves from arms dealing to involvement in an Islamic terrorist group. Ironically, the movie shows US intelligence agencies so alert they know what somebody's listening to on his iPod--yet fatally unaware of what their sister agencies are up to.

The FBI, led by a couple of macho agents operating overseas, is cluelessly investigating someone who's working undercover for another US agency. We know this--it's in the trailer. The movie however doesn't seem to know we know and waits forty minutes to spring it on us as a shocking revelation. If we didn't know it, we'd have had a hard time knowing why we were watching the muddled-seeming action up to then.

A prologue shows Horn as a child witnessing his father's car-bombing death in Sudan, and we are told he later grew up in Chicago with his American mother (whose family name is Horn). He got a good education, we eventually learn, and as a volunteer in the US Army became a special operations officer in Afghanistan. There, his observation of the Mujahideen brought out his Muslim roots and a desire to join anti-American forces.

So the FBI guys think, at least. But the trouble with this film is that despite its non-stop action, the hero's actual allegiances and the competing American operatives' long-term goals aren't every really clear.

As the real-time action of the movie begins, Samir gets arrested in Yemen trying to sell a truckload of sophisticated detonator devices to anyone who will buy. It's then that macho FBI men come to interrogate Horn, knowing he's in a tight spot. It's a classic good-cop/bad-cop setup: Max (Neal McDonough) is a meanie who beats Samir up; Roy (Guy Pearce, an Australian doing Southern US) son of a Baptist preacher, knows a little more about the psychology of interrogation/recruitment and has a lighter touch. Either way though, Horn isn't going to cooperate. In prison he befriends Omar (Saïd Taghmaoui), who belongs to a new Islamic terrorist group, and manages to be included with Omar's comrades in a prison break.

Traitor exhibits one of America's primary weaknesses in its dealings with other countries, especially Muslim Arab ones--a well-meaning ignorance posing as knowledge. It thinks that because its characters speak lines of Arabic or recite the Quran, it's creating an authentic feel. But the Middle Eastern sequences were shot in Morocco, and when actors speak Moroccan Arabic in scenes set in Yemen, the effect is the opposite of authentic. Contrast Nick Broomfield's The Battle for Haditha, about actual events, with real Iraqis, refugees from the war and occupation, playing Iraqis and speaking Iraqi dialect. Broomfield has shown that an English-speaker's film about Arabs can be accurate. But here, the fact that Don Cheadle, a sensitive, dedicated actor, recites some Arabic phrases doesn't make him seem Sudanese; it reveals unmistakably that he isn't. The Arabic phrases mixed in with English--which is what the Arab terrorists mostly speak among themselves--aren't used correctly. Only once or twice does a ritual Arabic phrase meet with the appropriate response; very often the sayings are left dangling, which in Arabic never happens and makes the dialogue feel awkward and fake. Taghmaoui has said he made an effort to make the film more authentic; but it has to be pointed out that he was born to Moroccan Berber parents in the tough Saint Denis suburb of Paris, not in the Arab world. He's illogically cast as an Arab of patrician origins who attended a private school in Switzerland as a youth.

The movie comes with an improbable assumption that a devout Muslim and fundamentally good man would know not to side with Islamic terrorists and instead would ultimately choose to work against them and for the USA. This theory was proposed as the movie's premise, improbably enough, by the comedian Steve Martin. In the real world there's no proven correlation between devoutness and terrorism or anti-terrorism. Even if there were, it would be hard to illustrate in an action movie and it isn't illustrated here. Why in fact is Samir an American agent, after all, assuming he is? That's never made clear, though his having grown to adulthood and prospered in America might be motivation enough.

The confused allegiances of a mole are illustrated by Samir's distress when he winds up blowing up a big chunk of some American diplomatic headquarters to gain credibility with the group he's infiltrated--and killing people that weren't supposed to die. The US would approve this? That would be a major scandal. Later Samir's having one busload of Americans blown up instead of many is presented as damage control.

Fareed (Aly Khan), the overlord of the terrorists, is a bland, champagne-swigging fellow who claims such behavior is justified by the Quran. The teaching point is that the Islamic terrorists' version of Islam is an ersatz one. Fareed (Aly Khan), is played by a London-born actor of Indian heritage. Just as the US intelligence agencies are at war with each other without knowing it, the terrorist group is ineffectual, allowing Samir to sabotage their biggest operation against the US and recruiting undisciplined 17-year-olds. Roy not only is the son of a preacher man, but we learn later has a Ph.D. in Arabic studies. That doesn't seem to have much practical value since he doesn't speak Arabic to Samir even in the Yemeni prison, and in a final scene he's corrected for using "as-salamu 'alaykum" at the end instead of the beginning of the conversation. Maybe his specialty was pre-Islamic poetry?

Given the confusing allegiances and muddled plot, Traitor's violence and suspense aren't as involving as they could have been. Actors like Cheadle, Peacce, and Jeff Daniels (in a minor role) add tone, and Nachmanoff manages to make the film look expensive despite costing a derisory sum by blockbuster standards. But money or the appearance of it and committed actors unfortunately still don't equal authenticity. It's a sure thing that Bloomfield's rough-looking Battle for Haditha cost less, but it's a great deal more impactful and realistic.

As a critic has said, this movie, without being convincing, will sow a little more paranoia. Like too many US government leaders, it believes noise and bluster and a superficial smattering of knowledge can take the place of authentic cultural awareness.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.