Betrayed!
Sonny Bunch liked Traitor a lot more than I did:
This is a movie sure to spark some controversy. Though one of the few films to portray radical Islam as a legitimate (if not existential) threat, it surely will madden some that the Jihadi terrorists whom Samir befriends are not cartoonish, cardboard cutouts. Their motivations are examined even as their behavior goes unexcused.
Really? It’s not a terribly entertaining movie (certainly it’s got nothing on the Bourne series) and, really, does anyone come away with any greater understanding of, well, anything after watching the film? That it heavy-handedly alludes to the most obvious and superficial motivations for terrorism does not, in my book, make it worthwhile.
Look, I appreciate that the movie made an attempt to portray terrorism in a way that’s more thoughtful than an episode of 24 — it gets an A for intention (if not effort) — but I think I’d prefer Jack Bauer’s dumb-plus-a-gun antics to Traitor’s dreary moping pretty much any day of the week. It’s not that a show like 24 is particular sharp or even particularly good, but what it does have is an appropriate sense of itself: 24 is a violent, stupid action-fantasy — and it knows it; Traitor is fully convinced it’s saying something deep and important, but, I’m sorry to say, it’s just not.
Testify, Brother Suderman!Politics are all well in good, but in an action movie, the action should be front and center! If a director is going to imbue an action film with a political subtext a screening of “Red Dawn” or “Death Race” should be mandatory.
— Mark · Aug 29, 03:14 PM · #
Here’s the problem: they’re marketing this film like it’s an action movie (one of the tag lines is “this year’s ‘Bourne Supremacy’”), which is lunacy. This isn’t an action picture. It’s much more of an international thriller, something along the lines of “Marathon Man.”
Is it slow and a little heavy handed, especially in that first hour? Absolutely. Do I prefer it to, say, “True Lies,” a film that really does use cardboard cutouts as terrorists? Probably not. But for our time I think it’s a worthwhile flick. I mean, it’s no “Dark Knight,” which is (obviously) the greatest movie ever made. (Just admit it, Peter, you’ll be happier.)* But I’ll take “Traitor” over “Syriana” or “Stop-Loss” or “Rendition” or “In the Valley of Elah” any day of the week.
*Joking
— Sonny Bunch · Aug 29, 03:18 PM · #
Peter I think you are treating one of the movie’s biggest strengths as a flaw. You complain about the portentousness and self-importance of the terrorists:
playing chess, one terrorist gravely intones, “You must be willing to sacrifice some of your pawns if you want to win.”
Terrorism is theater, and theater is performed for an audience. Ours is America,” one of the film’s murderous masterminds informs his fellow conspirators as they plan an attack. It’s a bloated, painfully pretentious line
To begin with, I think this is a failure of assigning a character’s failings to the screenwriter. On a deeper level, though, I thought that this was a really bright spot for the movie, because it strikes me that terrorists are pretentious and self-important people. They have to be, don’t they? I’m someone who fully believes that there is no distance between “greatness” and self-regard; I think that almost every great man has also been insufferably pretentious. Part of the reason we remember many people as capital-G Great is because they acted with a sense of narrative and an inflated view of their own importance that rubs off on others. And who would be more self-conscious about their actions and importance than a terrorist?
We’re talking about people who are waging a media war, a war of television. Add into that the religious zealots absolute certainty in his own righteousness and you have a recipe for pretentiousness and self-regard. One of the odder aspects of al Qaeda is the fact that, for all of their nods to the common Muslim, the power structure of al Qaeda has always been filled with the affluent. Terrorism is expensive, and even terrorists have class structures. I thought one of the cleverer moments of the movie was when Omar said that he learned to speak English at a Swiss boarding school. For all of his religious zeal, Omar is a Westerner at heart, and I think there is something very Western about people whose minds are so attuned to media and history. Only people who think of life as a movie could have planned 9/11.
— Freddie · Aug 29, 03:51 PM · #