Dir. Jeffrey Nachmanoff, US, 2008, 114 mins
Cast: Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Said Taghmaoui
Review by Carol Allen
This is a well made and gripping thriller with an unusual and well thought out plot and top notch performances.
Cheadle plays former US Special Operations officer Samir Horn, an American citizen of mixed parentage and a Muslim. Hot on his trail is FBI agent Roy Clayton (Pierce), as everything that he and indeed we learn about Samir indicates that he is part of and even a motive force in an international terrorist network.
The film opens with an attention grabbing sequence of Samir as a small boy witnessing his father being killed in an explosion, which then cuts to Samir arms dealing in the Yemen and effectively sets up the character's past without a word being said. Cheadle is a terrific actor and for much of the story we are given an experience which appears to challenge the preconceptions we're fed daily about terrorists, in that here we have a terrorist, who has all the characteristics of a hero. He stands up for the weak, is a man of integrity and is not keen on killing. The gradual revelation of his character is very well done, building our interest in and involvement with the character.
The growing friendship between him and fellow terrorist Omar (Taghmaoui) is very nicely done and there's a powerful performance from Alyy Khan as wealthy businessman Fareed, who is masterminding and bankrolling the terrorist plot from his Belgravia apartment. Pearce doesn't have anything like as interesting a role, though he does what he has to do well. He's the intelligent and thoughtful one as opposed to his rather crass partner but the fact that the character's an Arab scholar is never really used, which is a pity, as it would have given him an extra dimension. There's also not a lot for the excellent Archie Panjabi as Sahir's sometime girlfriend to do either. But the main focus is quite correctly always on Cheadle. The film moves about the world a lot as well, giving us lots of interesting locations, including some rather fine shots of Waterloo station and the many chase sequences are excitingly shot and edited.
There is though one disappointing aspect to the film, in that when we find out Sahir's real motivation, which involves a slimy CIA contractor (Jeff Daniels) with his own agenda, the film loses some of its element of originality and challenge, ducking away from its apparently controversial premise in a way a European film maker would probably not have done. Not totally however, in that its protagonist is still both a Muslim and a good guy, which is unusual for Hollywood. The final trap Samir finds himself in towards the end of the story is a very effective one and even with that one reservation, this is still a cracking and intelligent thriller, which holds the attention throughout.
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