Rendition Review
By Joe Lozito
Abducted View
If you watch the TV series "24" (and I do) then you know how easy it is to force a confession out of someone. Step 1, call Jack Bauer. Step 2, leave the room. Step 3, ignore the screaming and come back just before the commercial break. The rest writes itself. Somewhere between FOX's preposterous but endlessly addictive Kiefer Sutherland series and reality lies "Rendition", a well-crafted political pot-boiler that almost succeeds at being neither manipulative nor sensationalistic - no small feat when dealing with hot-button topics like terrorism, torture and civil liberties.
The film gets its title from the phrase "extraordinary rendition", the practice - started during the Clinton years - of transferring suspected terrorists to countries with more lenient feelings about torture. When the film opens, in an unnamed North African nation (filmed in Morocco but clearly meant to be Egypt), a suicide bombing has left one American dead and the U.S. government clamoring for answers. At the same moment, Egyptian-American Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is returning from Cape Town on a business trip. Suspicious calls on his cell phone records prompt CIA honcho Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) to invoke the titular act. Somewhere between the runway and customs, Anwar disappears, leaving his pregnant wife and child waiting at the baggage claim.
Reese Witherspoon, slightly out of her depth, plays the wife, Isabella - a role that requires the actress to become increasingly distressed and, unfortunately, increasingly shrieky. Since we never see Isabella and Anwar on screen together - they share a casual phone call at the film's start - it takes a leap to imagine them as husband and wife. In the film's least plausible subplot, Izzy is told that her husband never boarded the plane but, possessing evidence to the contrary, she is able to reach out to a college friend (Peter Sarsgaard) who conveniently works for a Senator (Alan Arkin).
The film's best moments revolve around the interrogation of Anwar and the mixed feelings of CIA newbie Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal). Freeman is a great role for Mr. Gyllenhaal, it plays well into his skills for dry-beyond-his-years exasperated humor. As the icy architect of the abduction and Freeman's boss, Ms. Streep, adopting a slight Southern twang, is typically brilliant.
There are certainly moments in "Rendition" that are sensationalistic (Izzy is allowed a bit too much access) and manipulative (some slow-mo here, a baby crying there). Its shades of gray are a bit too black-and-white. But what makes "Rendition" a powerful two hours is just how easy it is to believe the events it portrays. Though the government cover-up is insidious, it's also downright sloppy. And the apathy of the politicians is appropriately frustrating.
Director Gavin Hood (2005's rightly-praised "Tsotsi") and writer Kelley Sane take their time developing the many parallel plotlines (there is a complex love story between two young North Africans, played by newcomers Moa Khouas and Zineb Oukach, but the less said about it the better). It requires a certain attention from the audience, and that attention is rewarded in the end. This is the type of movie that Alejandro González Iñárritu would have made and, in fact, its powerful closing climax provides the type of revelations that
"Babel", for all its self-importance, never did.
