Traitor vs Into The Wild

Traitor is one of those movies that I wish I liked more, because it has something to say, and I wish more movies had something to say, you know? But I only kind of liked it, and I think ultimately it’s because it’s not really saying as much as it would like to, or as much as it would like me to think it’s saying anyway, and if it’s only pretending to say something, then can it be a little fun at least? Because Traitor is well-acted, capably filmed and, unfortunately, needlessly dull.

Traitor stars Don Cheadle as Samir, a Muslim who, as a boy, watched his father die in a bombing. Now Samir is a bomb-dealer, supplying weapons to terrorists. That his father was killed in the manner Samir is now peddling is never brought up in the movie, so we only have subtleties in Cheadle’s acting to discern any conflict or regret. Cheadle’s great, as always, but in Traitor, I felt like his acting was the only tool at the filmmaker’s disposal to build any kind of mystery. Is he a traitor? Is he a spy? Who does he work for? No one seems to know, so I was left waiting for Cheadle to blink or move his eyebrows or cross his fingers or whistle or something to clue me in. I never quite figured it out. Samir certainly behaves like a terrorist, but he’s also compassionate and loyal to his friends, and while in prison, he’s immediately sticking up for people against the stereotypical prison bully who shows up to make the prison scenes scary (he serves no other purpose, and very little of the movie is set in prison, so I’m thinking Traitor could have used some of this time to develop one of the other characters. We’ll get to that in a second.)

While Samir is in the Middle East selling bombs, he’s being pursued by two F.B.I. agents—doesn’t the F.B.I. usually stay here?—played by Guy Pearce and Neal McDonough. Pearce is his usual dependable self. His agent is determined, complicated and smart, with Pearce working a serviceable American southern accent. McDonough is merely loud and sarcastic, playing his part of “bad cop” to its eye-rolling conclusion.

Will Samir go through with the vicious attack he’s helping plan on U.S. soil? Is he really a good guy? Will the F.B.I. agents catch him before either of those things matter? What’s Jeff Daniels have to say about this? Yeah, Jeff Daniels is in Traitor, for about two and a half scenes. It’s too much to be a cameo, and too low-wattage to be stunt casting. The only thing I can make of his character and the way it’s handled is that Jeff Daniels must have a lot of footage cut from Traitor. His scenes make little sense, and are edited in such an odd way it’s like Traitor was directed by Bobby Bowfinger without Jeff Daniels being informed.

It wasn’t. Traitor was directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who makes sure the cameras are pointed in the right direction, and stages enough shoot-outs and explosions that Traitor might appeal to action fans who stumble upon the trailer. There’s a lot of philosophizing though, and a fair amount of preaching, with very little payoff. We followed a similar storyline in The Interpreter, but that film was able to play both as a drama and a thriller simultaneously. Traitor only knows how to be one of those things at a time, and neither completely. It’s always worth the price of admission to see Pearce and Cheadle sink their teeth into their roles; Traitor offers little besides that.

Into the Wild, perhaps because it’s a true story, perhaps because there’s not as much of a desire to straddle the pop and the political, or perhaps just because it’s better, succeeds in giving us a frustrating-yet-compelling character to follow into either peace or destruction. It has something to say, says it, and lets us sort out whether or not we were also entertained.

Into the Wild’s conflicted hero is Christopher McCandless, a kid who graduates from college, takes a summer roadtrip before starting law school in the fall, and never comes home. McCandless—renamed Alexander Supertramp—wants to live life naturally and without the trappings of technology, suburbia or his parents. He burns his money, abandons his car, and hitchhikes his way up the Pacific Northwest to Alaska. It’s a beautiful, life-affirming trip, but it’s full of mistakes, and well, if you know anything about Christopher’s real life, you know he never made it to law school. What I’m trying to say is that Into the Wild is crazy sad. But, it has astonishing cinematography, spot-on performances (Emile Hersch is great as McCandless, but Vince Vaughan and Catherine Keener moved me more as friends McCandless makes on his trip.), and in Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack, the best work of its kind since Magnolia. It’s practically a character.

Into the Wild was directed by Sean Penn. His films are often emotionally complicated, but he’s never done anything this visually assured before. Into the Wild is paced slowly, with a focus on both the good and bad in nature (there’s a scene with a moose that must have been faked, but I couldn’t spot any proof of that on screen). He found a way to balance the conflict within humans in a way the makers of Traitor didn’t, and no performances feels slighted or over-edited, or you know, missing. Hal Holbrook has a tiny part, but he’s served better by Into the Wild than by practically anything else in his career. Holbrook’s so good, you’d be justified in renting it just for his performance, which feels like a necessary part of the larger whole of Into the Wild. Only a couple characters in Traitor have the same advantage.  Sure, I left Into the Wild with questions, but the answers weren’t being held by actors waiting for the right moment in the screenplay.

Traitor: C

Into the Wild: A