A great travesty of the last decade or so has been the decline in quality of Steve Martin movies, and, even worse, the decline in Steve Martin movies. The man had a small role in the funny Baby Mama and has the Pink Panther 2 coming up in early 2009. Yawn… Thankfully great news was dealt last week when it was announced Martin was joining the cast of the new Nancy Meyers romantic comedy, co-starring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. Apparently Martin and Baldwin will be fighting over Streep in that typical weepy The Holiday & Something’s Gotta Give kind of way. At the very least it will be great to see him in a leading role again. Martin has apparently been working more lately on the written page, as he’s written some novella and most recently a non-fiction book about his younger years as a comic. He also came up with the idea for today’s movie entitled Traitor. Martin’s coming up with the idea of Traitor is about along the lines of Wes Craven directing a Meryl Streep drama about violins (oh, wait, that happened). There’s not an element of Martin in the movie, but here and behold is a project that stems from his mind, and it screams more of the Bourne Identity vibes than Cheaper by the Dozen. Co-starring Guy Pierce (Memento) and the great Jeff Daniels, the movie has scenes of power and intensity, but ultimately it left me feeling rather cold and ‘blah’ in the end, having felt like I’d seen this kind of material done better before. Cheadle, however, is terrific, as he goes back and forth from good and evil. The film has its moments, but it’s nothing more than a rental. Now Steve, will you return to our movie screens please? Give the pen a rest.