Cathy Weaver: You want something, Michael. I'll give you something. He named his dog after Ronald Reagan.
Al Sanders: Well, he ain't all bad.
Al Sanders: Well, he ain't all bad.
Betrayed is a 1988 film by Costa-Gavras, starring Debra Winger and Tom Berenger with supporting roles by John Heard and Ted Levine.
A woman starts work on a farm, and gets to know the owner. They get on well, and he introduces her to his children. He asks her to stay on when the work is finished. But things are not what they seem, and we discover the woman is actually an FBI agent investigating
The movie features the following tropes...
- Aborted Arc: The movie ends awkwardly with a shot of Rachel, Gary's daughter, waving goodbye, but she stays with her grandmother so we'll never know how she ended up once she was older.
- Asshole Victim: Gary's second, Wes (played by Ted Levine, three years before crossing paths with another novice FBI agent...) is nothing but a thorn on Cathy's side and is dispatched accordingly by her FBI colleague Al, who compares the act to cleaning his shoe. Criminal as he was, Cathy is nonetheless shaken by how cold her team acts about it.
- Big "NO!": Cathy does this after Gary and the others kill the black man they were hunting.
- Casting Gag: Ted Levine, a Jewish actor, plays the character Wes who is part of a highly antisemitic far-right group.
- Chess Master: Almost. Gary either anticipates or reacts quickly enough to Cathy's excuses to stop after she realizes they are not going to Denver... but he never checked if she carried a gun.
- Cry into Chest: Cathy does this to Michael after seeing Gary's hunting trip and fleeing from him.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Gary loves his kids and sincerely wants to marry Cathy until he learns she's a FBI agent.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Gary can't stand literal Nazis (as in, the kind with uniform and swastika flags) and is proud that his father fought them during World War II. He is offended when one of them tells him they share the same values.
- Shorty is as racist as the others, but he admits to Cathy even he Does Not Like Guns, or killing people (he confesses he has to close his eyes every time he pulls the trigger).
- FBI Agent: Cathy is a rookie. Her colleagues Michael and Al are G-men to the bone.
- From the Mouths of Babes: A rare case of being Played for Drama - when Cathy is putting Gary's young children to bed, they start spouting the same racist invective he does. Cathy is pretty upset, but does her best to hide it.
- Hidden Supplies: Cathy never finds out where the group keeps their stash of MAC10s. However, after Gary shows her the compartment full of papers hidden under the bedroom's floorboards, she takes the documents to her team to make copies.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Cathy is taken on a hunting trip by Gary. To her horror, she learns they're hunting a black man (he's given a gun with six bullets as a "sporting chance" presumably, while they all have automatic weapons). This makes her certain Gary's behind the murder in Chicago she's investigating.
- Idiot Ball:
- Would a group of hardened racist killers really take a woman they barely know to a human hunting party?
- What exactly was Gary's plan, even if Cathy hadn't been armed? Even with late 80's CSI tech, the FBI would have known she wasn't the shooter. Averted when he tries to take the shot anyway, which is more Suicide by Cop.
- In Love with the Mark: Cathy believes that Gary is innocent and genuinely falls for him, until he takes her on a hunting trip.
- Manipulative Bastard: Averted. Gary is sincere about his motives and genuinely wants Cathy to be aware of everything as his partner. At the end of the film, this is visibly how the community see Cathy herself, however.
- Message Board: Gary and his brethren leverage the power of early Internet message boards to link up and coordinate meetings, training camps, and even weapon drops.
- Named After Someone Famous: Gary named his dog Ronald Reagan. One of the FBI agents considers it a point in his favor.
- No Kill like Overkill: Both victims of Gary's terrorist cell meet the business end of a MAC10 and receive multiple shots long after they're dead.
- Oh, Crap!: Downplayed with Gary, who takes the news of Cathy's betrayal with contained emotion. In full display however the next day when Cathy realizes they're not going to Denver, but Chicago.
- Percussive Therapy: After Cathy flees the motel she's been staying at, Wes tries to stop her, but she ends up running into his truck door, knocking it off the hinges. He responds by yelling at her.
- Police Are Useless: Averted. Cathy is on her own because Gary misled her about the target, sending her team to a different city.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Par for the course with white supremacists. Ironically, Gary can't stand Nazis, however.
- Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: The unnamed far-right group which Gary is a part of believe Jews run the US government with black people as their foot soldiers and are waging war on white gentiles. For countering this they've armed themselves, coordinated across the country, trained and rob banks to get funds in preparation for many attacks that will double as false flag operations in several cases. Their opening crime was to assassinate a Jewish radio host in Chicago. Although its crimes weren't this extensive, they're loosely based on The Order, an actual group in turn inspired by the infamous Neo-Nazi book The Turner Diaries.
- Sarcastic Confession: When Gary asks Cathy if she's a "grasshopper" (Wes' term for FBI agent), she responds, "Shit, yeah."
- Small Role, Big Impact: Richard Libertini plays Sam Kraus, a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Alan Berg
. He only appears in the first five minutes of the film before being murdered, but it's that murder, it's implied, that leads the FBI to plant Cathy as a Deep Cover Agent inside Gary's life in the first place. - Time for Plan B: Cathy prevents Gary from shooting his target but there is a second sniper...
