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Traitor is a study in how not to try and create a mystery out of your protagonist. In the first three minutes we see Don Cheadle’s character watch as his father is killed in a car bomb. Then the movie jumps to 20 or so years later and he’s working with terrorists. For the first part of the film they toy with him being a terrorist or not. Then as we long suspected, he turns out to be working for the US government. Then they try and toy with the fact that he might actually be switching sides. In the end though we learn he bleeds red, white, and blue. It’s not really that complicated of a plot and one we’ve seen in bits and pieces other places. The problem is that by making the lead character, the protagonist a mystery we never get behind him. It isn’t like we question one thing about him, we question everything. We don’t know his “visible outer goal” as Michael Hauge would say. We’re not so much lost during the film as much as we simply don’t care. They do give us an interesting and raw view of terrorism which kind of keeps you watching, but the basic structure of the movie fails.