This 2007 film is scary. That's because the theme is about the practice of interrogating suspected terrorists in a foreign country where laws against torture do not apply. This practice is called rendition and this film makes it real. It's hard to watch.
The film opens in an American middle class suburb. Reese Witherspoon is playing with her small son when they get a phone call from her husband, Omar Metwally, an Egyptian citizen who has lived in America for 20 years. He tells his wife and son he is on the way home from a business trip and they plan on meeting him at the airport. All seems well.
When he gets off the plane, however, he is detained at the airport and questioned. He is a chemical engineer and the questioners are asking questions about a terrorist bomb plot. He denies everything. He seems clean but Meryl Streep, playing a high powered Washington decision maker, orders him to be put into rendition and he is whisked away to an unnamed middle eastern country and his name erased from the plane's passenger log while his wife and son wait patiently at the airport for a husband and father who has disappeared.
The scene now shifts to an unnamed middle eastern country where Yagal Noor, an Israeli actor of Jewish Iraqi descent, is cast in the role of the interrogator. Jake Gyllenhaal is cast as an American diplomat, who has just lost a co-worker in a suicide bombing, and has been promoted to assist Yagal Noor with the questioning. It is awful. I am cringing now just writing about it as scenes of waterboarding and electric shock torture are shown in detail. There is also a subplot about the interrogator's daughter and a suicide bomber which expands the story.
In the meantime Reese Witherspoon is trying desperately to find her husband. She seeks out an old boyfriend, played by Peter Sarsgaard who works for a senator, played by Alan Arkin. Even when they confront Meryl Streep, there is a blank wall of silence. Jake Gyllenhaal, however, is beginning to have a change of heart as the torturing goes on.
This is a serious film about a serious topic. It will make you cringe and it will also make you think. I give it a high recommendation but it is not recommended for the faint of heart. Rendition
This well acted drama is a wakeup call to the horrors of the alleged practice of "extraordinary rendition", where persons suspected of being involved in terrorist activities are apprehended and sent to another country to be interrogated (translate: tortured)
Based upon one cell phone record and an Islamic name, chemical engineer Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is removed from a flight from South Africa to Washington D.C. and sent to an interrogation centre, where he is questioned, beaten and abused for proclaiming his innocence.
The movie uses flashbacks and lots of switching between characters to illustrate the chain reaction that results, and how it affects not only El-Ibrahimi, but also his wife (Reese Witherspoon), his family, an observing CIA analyst (Jake Gyllenhaal), and even his torturer, Abasi Fawal.
In a gripping sub-plot, Fawal's daughter secretly becomes romantically involved with a young man, not knowing that his brother had perished at the hands of her father.
Chilling at times, and maddening at others, especially when Meryl Streep's character gets involved, this movie is about the suffering of the innocent as a result of the sins of a minority. Food for thought, even though it may be a bit too bitter for some tastes.
Amanda Richards, March 5, 2008
There's a lot on this DVD, almost all of it interesting and informative.
The movie itself is a dramatization of a composite case in which a traveler with a Middle Eastern name and heritage gets flagged as having possible terrorist ties, is waylaid by US/coalition authorities, and is sent to an "undisclosed location" where he is subjected to brutal bouts of questioning and torture. All this happens because of what might have been a simple cell phone mix-up.
However, to the movie's credit, while making a moving humanitarian appeal against such treatment, it does not foreclose on the possibility that this traveler might have some al-Qaida ties. The movie also tries to give at least some weight to our State Department's arguments for the necessity of extracting information by any means. Meryl Streep makes the Government case with chilling pragmatic efficiency.
So this movie does recognize some of the complexities involved. It is not a simplistic good guys vs. bad guys screed. This becomes especially true as it interweaves the story of two young Middle Eastern lovers caught up in the inflamed politics of their fundamentalist culture.
Then this DVD contains what is tantamount to a whole second feature film - this one a documentary outlining the cases of two men who actually were tortured at such top-secret compounds located in out-of-the-way places around the globe. These undisclosed locations actually exist and are the receiving points for suspects detained under the Rendition Act.
Neither of the two men interviewed here are Americans. The testimony of the German National from a Middle Eastern background is especially poignant. He talks about how his life was derailed by the torture he endured after he was taken, hooded and humiliated, to one of these sites - on the flimsiest evidence of any terrorist involvement.
Finally, the DVD comes with a particularly intelligent Director's commentary. It will be worth your while to watch the features again, with this commentary turned on. In the end, Director Hood calls his project "a poetic lament." There's probably no better way to sum up the complex, compelling tragedies brought home by this DVD.
The film itself is flawless. After spending Chinese New year stuck at home with a few dozen movies and plenty of spare time, I can say that most other films that I watched were solidly in the 2 to 3 star class, while this one has everything for it: a solid story, based on current political events, a first class cast, excellent cinematography (the No Country For Old Men crowd might get their desert pictures from here too!), and even a good copy for me.
And then as an add-on the odd reviews here by the political wackos. Very entertaining, if they were not so sad.
The subject is, as the title says, rendition, i.e. the practice of transferring suspects to other countries without proper procedure. A suspect can be anybody by accident. The plot here involves a young CIA agent in 'North Africa', who is not used to the practices, it is his first 'torture case'. He develops a conscience and acts upon it. In parallel we watch a young local couple, the daughter of the police chief, who ran away from home, with her boy friend, an art student, who is of course also something else. The story is skillfully intervowen with the interrogation of the suspect from the US.
Recommendable. - Reese Witherspoon - Torture - Waterboarding - American History'
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