Don Cheadle is Samir Horn, a man suspected of terrorism. Guy Pearce plays Agent Clayton who is heading up the unit trying to track him down. It is revealed that Samir is an ex-U.S. Special Operations officer who was working overseas when he rediscovered his Islamic faith and decided to stay there when his run in the military was over. It starts off with Samir being involved with some terrorists who get arrested by Clayton and his men. Samir is trying to sell them detonators and gets caught and jailed. He makes contacts in prison and escapes. The rest of the movie has twists and turns revealing what Samir is really up to. It also stars Jeff Daniels as another agent. The movie was slow moving at points and the twists weren’t really too unexpected. Just imagine anything predictable and by-the-numbers that could happen and it does. It wasn’t a bad movie, it actually had some good edge of your seat scenes but just a bit lackluster in story and acting. Cheadle is usually the man but even he is just OK in this flick.
There are so many terrorism type movies these days. The movie industry really tries capitalizing on something that could hit close to home for viewers. Most of us lived through terrorist attacks and heard about suicide bombers in Afghanistan or Iraq. This is just another cookie cutter type terrorist plot. The whole time you SHOULD be thinking “Is Cheadle really a bad guy or is he working undercover?” but that question is answered pretty much 30 minutes into the movie and it’s not a shocker. I was disappointed in the lack of pizzazz in the supposed twists.
There isn’t much more to say about this one. I get that they were trying to give an intellectual look at real Islamic followers as opposed to extremists but I wanted something more. I love Cheadle as an actor, which is why I checked out this movie in the first place, but I think this could have been better. Jeff Daniels was in a weird role that didn’t seem used enough to have any viewers even care about him. Pearce isn’t bad but he seemed underused also. It was pretty much all on Cheadle’s shoulders. I just want to go on record saying this is NOT a bad movie, but this is far from being MADE. It aint getting WHACKED though.
IMDB – 7.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 53%
Movie Wiseguys – 6.5/10