'Traitor' Leaves Much To Be Desired

By Connect2Mason Reporter Emily Culley

The new film "Traitor" starts about a quarter of a century ago when young Samir Horn (Don Cheadle) walks outside just in time to see his dad's car blow up. Afterwards Samir is sent to live in Chicago, where his mother lives, where he later joins the U.S. military and becomes a U.S. Special Operations officer. After leaving the U.S. military, Horn becomes a leading suspect in a string of bombings across the world.

Throughout the movie, Horn is constantly questioning his religion, his role in the bombings, and his devotion to those around him. The plot attempts to keep certain aspects of Horn's background concealed, perhaps in an attempt to build up the suspense of the internal and external conflict, but the plot never sets just right. It's too secretive.

The two sides (the FBI and the international religion conspiracy group) are constantly going back and forth between being the good guys and the bad guys. By the middle of the movie my mind was mentally wracked trying to keep all sides and details straight—only heightening because of the lack of details from Horn's past.

The camera angles, shots, and locations did nothing to further the plot; if anything, they set the plot back a couple of notches. IT was half shot on a tripod with still frames and half shot with a hand held camera with shaky frames. Explosions were going off left and right during all of the shaky scenes, only adding to the level of nausea.

More characters were added to the plot in nearly every scene, only making it more and more confusing as who was the actual 'traitor' in question.

By the time the scene stopped shaking the characters were in a completely different part of the world, tackling a different and new problem. All in all, I was either utterly nauseated by the shaky camera or entirely confused as to how or why the characters went from Russia to Canada.

The plot elements of the movie never add up quite right, leaving me either angry, confused, or just too mentally tired to keep up any longer; the end result of the confusion was entirely anticlimactic. C-.