Traitor

Remote-piloting my MQ-1 Predator attack drone over my queue the last couple months I’ve had this nagging feeling that I was missing something. Some enemy, both foreign and domestic, hiding in plain sight, taunting me. Then walking the aisles of the BX, my wrist sore from hours of joysticking…, I passed the DVD racks, apparently stocked not just by the blind, but their actual backpack-wearing dogs, and there he was, Don Cheadle staring back at me. “Oh yeah, Traitor.” Gotcha!

It was a little-advertised, little-seen and, it turns out, only mildly well-reviewed picture. Well, the poster kindly offers that “the truth is complicated.” But the truth is really very simple, 41% of those critics are stupid moron crapheads: this movie rocks. It’s so nice I watched it twice. Because, you know, it’s complicated.

I don’t want to give away too much, but Don Cheadle is selling Semtex and detonators to Arab operators (okay, don't worry, not really Don Cheadle, you know what I meant), and may or may not be a deep-cover CIA agent, or an Al Qaeda-esque double-mole. Think Syriana with a half dozen fewer movies stuffed inside, Three Kings without the jokes (or a preposterous Nerf football bomb), but all the double-triple head faking, the legitimate and discomfiting questioning of American Middle East policy, and a lot of the excellent Arab character actors you've seen kicking around in this genre. (Okay so I wrote “Arab,” and thought “hrm.” Turns out the first five billed “Arabs” are French, Asian, English, Asian and French. Ha! Discomfiting, indeed.)

Other good stuff you get. Shot on actual factual locations in Morocco, etc., this thing looks great. Steve Martin, yes that Steve Martin, wrote the story and produced. And the final twist-o-rama, the “how are they gonna solve this problem?” that undoes so many cool movies in the final minutes is a new one and you might just jump up and say “Gotcha!” Not that I did that. I would never do something so childish. Only a stupid moron craphead acts like that. Not me. Nope.

And finally, Guy Pearce appears to be making movies again. Well, what am I trying to say? Cool movies? Movies you want to see? This is great news. Remember L.A. Confidential, or the first, uh, three times, complicated, you saw Memento? Check out The Proposition, an ugly little Australian western. Also based on nothing more than clicking through his imdb.page, I’m now looking forward (whoops! backward) to seeing The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow (director K-19: The Widowmaker, and what! writer Near Dark) and written by Mark Boal (writer In The Valley of Elah).

(Quick. Three more pretty cool movies set in “The War on Terror” you may have missed: The Kingdom, Body of Lies and The English Patient.)

Gotcha!