IS THERE no limit to the talent of Steve Martin? Best known as an actor, Martin has also been a playwright, an author of books for adults and children, a stand-up comic, a documentary narrator, a banjo player, a recording artist, and a comedy screenwriter.

Now Martin gets the screen credit for the story of a serious- minded political thriller, which he proposed to film producer David Hoberman when they were making Bringing Down the House.

Martin's concept for Traitorinvolves a former US Special Operations officer who is suspected of being the perpetrator of international terrorist bombings.

In expanding that scenario for a screenplay, writer-director Jeffrey Nachmanoff added dramatic spice by making the protagonist a Muslim born in Sudan and raised in Chicago from when he was 12.

When we first meet Samir (played by Don Cheadle) in Yemen, he’s supplying Semtex to jihadists and attracting the attention of FBI special agents depicted as a good cop/bad cop team. One (Guy Pearce) comes from an academic background and is so zealous that he studied Arabic at college; the other is a hard-line, old-school enforcer (Neal McDonough).

Like Knowing, Traitorpreys on and stokes fears of terrorism in the post-9/11 world, but at least it makes an effort to engage the viewer in questioning the obvious assumptions it raises through the purportedly enigmatic character of Samir. In that respect, however, Traitoris undermined by Cheadle's oddly inexpressive performance, and by director Nachmanoff's rudimentary treatment of its tangled but rambling tale.

To its credit, the film delivers a clever, satisfying punchline, which was drawn from Martin’s original storyline. Getting to that resolution is such a cluttered path that you could, if you were so inclined, spend your time counting the various international locations this tirelessly globetrotting tale claims to visit as it spans three continents.