photo credit: boingboing.net

Don Cheadle is one of the most interesting actors on the planet. And of course, that's my opinion.  But I have some hard facts to prove it. Let me just get a few things out of the way before I begin.  I'm a Don Cheadle fan.  When I came out of grad school I landed a literary internship at THE Joseph Papp Public Theater in NYC and I had the fortune of co-dramaturging Don Cheadle's play GROOMED.  Yes, Mister Ocean Eleven writes theater as well.  I was immediately impressed with Cheadle's integrity, his emotional accessibility and his prowess—this brother was no push-over and knew EXACTLY what he wanted to happen during the process of workshopping his play.  Cheadle was not willing to compromise the brutal truth about a group of black men struggling against racism during a University of Nebraska and University of Oklahoma football game.

And I was thankful for him.  Because I was a young bud inundated with a lot of actor types who were floating on ego and envy as opposed to passion for the craft and for the work.  However, Cheadle created an ideal template for young entertainment-bound brothers like myself: great craft requires laying down the ego and exploring personal truths AND one can do that with passion, conviction and long-haul commitment. Cheadle has been cast in some great flicks. There's not a doubt. Colors, Devil With A Blue Dress, Rosewood, A Lesson Before Dying, Crash, Hotel Rwanda and Talk To Me, to name just a few.   And, FACT, he delivers a quality, absorbed, accessible performance each and every time. FACT, a lot of his work, including the forthcoming Toussaint where he plays Toussaint, delves into the political or social. [I have yet to see him in some B-scale romantic comedy featuring the latest in Gospel choirs where black men run companies and black women, who also run companies, chase after them.]

And now his latest venture—Traitor.  This is not a review, but I will say I saw it last weekend and I thought it was performed amazingly and boy, what a provocative story.   Cheadle plays Samir Horn, a half-Sudanese Muslim American who finds himself in a deadly Cat-and-Mouse military/government game between Iraq and America.   It's classic Don Cheadle.  Finding a role that challenges everything we claim we know about black people, especially black men, and a role that's not packaged in Armani suits or some tiresome Christian morality tale, but in pure humanity.  I'm saying Cheadle is top-notch for humanizing black men.  Denzel romanticizes black men, Morgan Freeman plays the all-knowing black confidant quite well, but Cheadle puts his heart on his sleeve and never apologizes

I suggest you go out to the movie theater this weekend, if you haven't already, and support Mister Cheadle in Traitor.  His performance as the Muslim American is praise-worthy and will certainly push a lot of buttons. Good!