Struggling against itself and its own genre limitations, Traitor ends up ensnared in its own contradictions. It’s a confounding film, at once seeming to want to appeal to the viewer as both fresh and familiar. Traitor adheres to the formulas and sequences of well-established genres including the prisoner sequence, spy and action movie clichés, even the revenge storyline… but implanted in a politically current plot about a potential suicide bomber and attack on U.S. soil. That should have been relevant and hot topic enough to forego the usual by-the-numbers trappings, but there’s so much retread in the script, so much that’s been done before, that it leaves little hope for star Don Cheadle (himself a refreshing choice as an action star) to save it. Cheadle does his best Bourne imitation, quite convincingly coming across as the smartest man in the room, and even wills some of these set pieces into working far and away better than they should. But the film is submarined by its own unwillingness to take untraveled paths. Every action sequence has been done before, and better. Every relationship seems like repeats. In the end, it’s just all so uniquely… conventional.
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