Sneak Preview of "Traitor"

Last night I got a chance to check out the new Don Cheadle flick "Traitor" at a limited sneak preview thing. I'm not a professional film reviewer, so let's just get this out of the way right now- I'm very likely going to spoil the hell out of this movie. If you have an interest in seeing it in the theaters and not knowing what is going to happen... stop reading.

Last chance.

Alright, I've been trying to get out of the habit of giving reviews "grades" and such (although I failed miserably last night in describing the movie to Jaclyn). Grades are really arbitrary- if I hated something that you don't care about, what's my grade mean to you? Nothing, that's what. So, instead, let's just talk about the movie.

So, I've glanced at a couple of other reviews of the film, and part of me is thinking "Did we watch the same film?" Because, really, there's nothing remotely unexpected about the plot. I swear to gods, every step of the way, I felt like I knew exactly what was going to happen. The problem here is partly the fault of the advertising. The film wants us to think that our man Don is a terrorist. But... well... he's the lead protagonist, and it's pretty damned clear from the trailers that he's not a terrorist. The first half of the film is set up with the expectation that we not know whether Don is or is not a terrorist. But we already know. He's not.

But, really, the plot is so completely conventional that even if it weren't for the advertising, there'd still be no real question about him. The setup is just too obvious. Once it's finally reveiled that he's not, in fact, a terrorist, but is actually in deeeeeep cover, the tension shifts from "is he/isn't he" to "will he get caught". This is more interesting, but, again, utterly predictable.

I don't even have to tell you what the "twist" is, here, and I bet you can guess. When it's reveiled that Don is in deep cover, we're given three pieces of information. From those three pieces of information, I'd bet a cookie you can tell what is going to happen.
1. He's in deep cover.
2. He has only one contact on the outside.
3. His contact hasn't told anyone about him.

Go ahead. Guess. You won't be wrong.

This kind of utterly predictable plot just keeps pressing through. And the thing is, it's not a bad plot, exactly. It's just... well... it's been done a million times. It's not bad, but it's pretty much completely forgetable.

The good news, however, is that the film treats the problem of terrorism as being a little more nuanced than the typical "Muslims hate us because Islam is full of evil!" that we're usually given. I'm not an expert, though, so I can't say how accurate the presentation is. And saying that it's more nuanced should be taken with a grain of salt. It's like pointing out that a pizza is better than Domino's pizza. It may be better, but that doesn't necessarily make it good, either. Almost anything that treats Muslim characters with more than paper-thin motivations and personalities is going to be better.

There are a number of Muslim characters in the film, of varying levels of devotion. One of the more interesting aspects of the film is that it presents the heads of the terrorist cells as being, essentially, war opportunists. They profit off of the death and destruction while leaving those of faith to accept the consequences and to suffer the casualties.

Don Cheadle and Said Taghmaoui turn in very good performances, but mostly left me wishing that this were a completely different film- maybe one that actually delved more deeply into their lives instead of trying to be all espionage/thriller. The rest of the cast aren't forgetable exactly. They're too cliche and ridiculous to be forgetable. Guy Pearce, in particular, is completely wasted here. His idiotic accent and hackneyed dialogue just completely overpowered every scene he's in. When he started on in his faux Texas accent about his "daddy" being a minister, I just wanted to tape his mouth shut.

Speaking of dialogue: it's bad. It's not just Pearce, either. The rule here is this- if you're a member of the US government, you will talk almost completely in trite jingoistic cliches.

Ultimately, Traitor isn't at all what I went in expecting. That it even attempts to treat terrorism as a complex issue and that it goes to any length to suggest that, you know, maybe not all Muslims fit neatly into a box both go above and beyond what I've come to expect from a film like this. Despite that, the film still feels like it could have been a lot more interesting if they'd focused on those issues more instead. It was more than I expected, but a lot less than it could have been.

I basically agree with this review.

This is a more generous review.

On violence and the media...

From an interview with Michael Henek:

Cineaste: Funny Games seems to be a contribution to the self-reflexive films about media and violence along the lines of Natural Born Killers or Man Bites Dog.

Haneke: My goal there was a kind of counterprogram to Natural Born Killers. In my view, Oliver Stone's film, and I use it only as example, is the attempt to use a fascist esthetic to achieve an antifascist goal, and this doesn't work. What is accomplished is something the opposite, since what is produced is something like a cult film where the montage style complements the violence represented and presents it largely in a positive light. It might be argued that Natural Born Killers makes the violent image alluring while allowing no space for the viewer. I feel this would be very difficult to argue about Funny Games. Benny's Video and Funny Games are different kinds of obscenity, in the sense that I intended a slap in the face and a provocation.

Full disclosure: I have not watched Funny Games (either version), but I have seen both Natural Born Killers and Man Bites Dog. In fact, when I was invited to present at symposium my last year of undergrad, it was for a paper I wrote about Man Bites Dog. Anyway...

I think that there's something to that criticism of NBK, and it was one of the same criticisms I had of MBD, too- for a film that seems to be suggesting that the media has at least some burden of the blame for excessive violence, these films glorify and entertain through the use of violence, too. Having not seen Funny Games yet, I can't say whether it falls into the same trap, but it's a problem I'm certainly interested in. I can't say how good the rest of that interview is- I stopped reading it because they go on to talk about a number of other films that I'm interested in seeing but haven't yet, and I didn't want them spoiled, so to speak.

I'm a big film fan, and I recognize that a lot of the films I like contain some pretty violent stuff. I'm a big horror fan (with the exception of slasher films- I hate most slasher flicks), which tends to involve some violence. But, one thing that I think is interesting is that I'm really fond of films that push me to places I don't usually go, or that create extremely strong reactions, or that force me to confront uncomfortable feelings or truths.

Take the film Hard Candy, for example. I'm a big BIG fan of Hard Candy. It's not a fun film, though. It's not the sort of thing that I think I'd sit down with a beer, a bowl of popcorn, and some friends and say "Hey, guys, let's throw in Hard Candy and get tipsy!" It's an extremely intense and horrifying film full of extremes. After watching it, I couldn't stop talking about it and discussing the premise of the film with the people around me. It was a film that was essentially a piece of wish fulfillment, but where, I think, many viewers found themselves placed in an uncomfortable position of almost feeling sorry for the antagonist of the film- while we might wish terrible things on people, when we're forced to see those terrible things taking place, the reality can make us profoundly uncomfortable.

Now, of course, this is manufactured. The film is designed in such a way on purpose. Would we feel as uncomfortable if the protagonist were someone else? Would we feel more comfortable if the action were presented in a different way? The ways that violence is used in a film can completely alter our perception of the film.

For me, violence in film can be many things. It can be entertaining, it can be gratuitous and exploitative, it can be interesting and informative, it can be educational, it can be an important tool for forcing the viewer to question something, etc. It all depends on the context.

I could (and still might) write at great length about this, but I'm interested to know how other people perceive violence in film- do you avoid violent films? Only certain types of violence? Do you think that films can use violence to teach a point or a raise important questions? Is it possible for a film to use violence to implicate the viewer (as Funny Games supposedly does), and if it does so, does it also implicate itself (as, I think, Man Bites Dog does)?