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Rendition
Directed by: Gavin Hood Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal Genre: Action-Adventure/ Drama Run Time: 122 min. Release Date: October 2007 On The Web: Official Site Teaser: Movie Trailer Reviewed by Byron Merritt |
Films that incorporate a solid political message along with outstanding performances are few and far between. The problem is incorporating the message without ramming it down the audience’s throat. Or not losing the audience in a quagmire of politicalese. SYRIANA suffered from the latter, while this one suffered only slightly under the strain of throat ramming and some poor character development (or minimal screen time). The film’s premise is based on the U.S. legal maneuver known as "extraordinary rendition," which, when translated, means the deportation of suspected terrorists to countries outside the U.S. for interrogation (see torture). Names, a person’s birth country, and the color of one’s skin come into play strongly, giving the flick a well-deserved sense of political bigotry. When Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally, MUNICH) comes back to the U.S. (his adopted home country) he is met at the airport by agents who quickly stuff him into a van and whisk him off to a far-away country. The big question is why? The reality is startling. When a U.S. agent is accidentally killed, the U.S. terrorists chasers want a scapegoat or, at the very least, someone to cop to helping the one who did it. And poor Anwar just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (with the wrong name and skin color). Jake Gyllenhaal (BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) stars as a CIA operative who has to witness firsthand the "interrogation" of Amwar. Having been friends with the American who was killed, Douglas Freeman (Gyllenhaal) quickly loses his stomach for the methods used by the U.S.- backed, foreign interrogators. Back in America, Amwar’s pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon, WALK THE LINE) is wondering why he hasn’t returned home. Calling upon an old beau named Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard, JARHEAD) who works for Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE), Isabella is given the runaround by the higher-ups regarding her husband’s whereabouts. Finally given the name of a homeland security person named Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA) she again butts heads with government silence on the policy of extraordinary rendition. Horrible and redeeming, RENDITION has plenty of strong actors who are given tidbit parts (except for Jake Gyllenhaal), giving much of the film an unidentifiable message from the standpoint of characters and our lack of caring for any of them. It is, however, well told. And the way the story works itself from beginning to end and then back again was pretty impressive (more of a parlor trick, though, but still fun to watch).
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Image from Rendition
DVD cost: $7.94 Purchase: Tower.com Film Review Stew Favorite? No. Stew Poo-Poo? No. Newsworthy: The film centers on the controversial CIA practice of extraordinary rendition, and is based on the true story of Khalid El-Masri who was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri. The movie also has similarities to the Canadian Maher Arar case. Arar (born 1970), a telecommunications engineer, lives in Canada, holding dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship. He was deported to Syria and tortured, in an apparent example of the United States policy of "extraordinary rendition". Movie Quote: "In all the years you've been doing this, how often can you say that we've produced truly legitimate intelligence? Once? Twice? Ten times? Give me a statistic; give me a number. Give me a pie chart, I love pie charts. Anything, anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies."
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