I chuckled to myself at the end of Traitor. A title card appeared as the credits began to roll that read 'Based on a story by Steve Martin' - that's funny I thought, imagine if it was THE Steve Martin! Maybe ol' Stevie took a bit of time out from shooting Pink Panther 2 to type up a quick political allegory about the moral conflicts of religious extremism. Ell Oh Ell. Unfortunately, a quick bit of IMDb-ing reveals that it is in fact THE Steve Martin, and as if that weren't frightening enough, he came up with the plot whilst working on 'Bringing Down the House'. Holy fuck.

Believe it or not, Martin's story is not the most original you've ever heard. It centres on a bureaucratic government agency who spend years tracking the operations of a large scale terrorist organisation only to discover that it is being masterminded by a former US Special Operations officer played by Don Cheadle. Now, in theory it makes sense to cast Don Cheadle, possibly the least plausible terrorist of all time, in the role of an implausible terrorist, but in practice you might as well be watching Zac Efron teach Muslim extremists how to detonate suicide bombs.

 

The FBI side of things is even more embarrassing. The writers have clearly seen 'The Wire', and they spend a lot of time trying to establish that there are 'institutional failures in THE SYSTEM' (i.e. there's AN UNDERCOVER BADDY who leaks information to THE OTHER BADDIES). But despite all this, it still comes off more CSI Miami than McNulty and Bunk, not helped by the frequent use of Apprentice-style aerial transitions and lines like 'Bingo, you've got yourself a terrorist.'

 

That said, it's not exactly a boring two hours, and the presence of Cheadle, however ridiculous, does make the whole thing more enjoyable. Or at least it makes up for Guy Pearce.

 

2 and a half snappy one-word titles out of 5

'INTERESTING' FACT: Don Cheadle can play the saxophone.