Search - Traitor on DVD

Ryan H. from EVANSTON, IL
Reviewed on 4/2/2011...

Great film with a great story. This film really helps portray an interesting look at operations of the cia. Don Cheadle is excellent and the suspense just keeps building.

0 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

Quite moving

Dawoud Kringle | New York City | 04/25/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Don Cheatle has always chosen interesting roles that hold great potential for social and human commentary. This is certainly no exception. His performance here was magnificent.



Being an American born convert to Islam, I am familiar with the conflicting feelings a Muslim has to face. ironically, the answers are simple. But implementing them in our daily life is never simple. "Traitor" shows this perfectly.



Cheatle's character illustrates this perfectly. From his childhood, he was exposed to political violence. Yet at heart, all he was interested in was living as a pious Muslim. Which brings us to the crux of the matter; politics. When a social structure arises that is based on ANY ideology, inevitably, a point will come when those in leadership positions will have to chose between adhering to their ideological principles at the expense of their political power, or "adjusting" their principles for the sake of political and / or economic expediency. All too often, human beings make a very poor choice in this. The whole of human history will provide an excellent model to study this phenomenon.



So, getting back to the movie, we are left with a great many open questions, or so it would seem. Was Cheatle's character the traitor, or did he truly adhere to the principles of Islam and chose the lesser of many evils? How does one explain Fareed, who drank alcohol and ate pork with the justification that he was simply blending in: something easily avoidable (which I can personally attest to)? Did the terrorist organization that Horn worked for betray Islam by turning their religion into a political agenda, and adapt methods that have no justification in Islamic spirituality? Did FBI Agent Clayton betray (or casually abandon) his family's Christian principles - and was Horn's devout Islamic beliefs responsible for exposing him to what he'd lost, or walked away from?



There are no easy answers to this, either in art or in real life. We make choices every moment and must live with the results and consequences of these choices. Samir Horn was an object lesson in this.



Finally, I want to say that I see in this movie not a single shred of anti-Islamic or anti-American rhetoric. People who accuse "Traitor" of either of these are missing the point. There is no political agenda here; only a human agenda; the agenda of coming to terms with what's within one's heart."