The title refers to ‘extraordinary rendition’, the act of which the US can grab suspected terrorists and move them to another country to be tortured for info without any legal ramifications or restraints.
So considering this explosive subject matter and showy cast, this pic’s understated effort at political consequence winds up being a little too subtle for its own good.
‘Extraordinary Rendition’ was introduced under the Clinton administration but not fully exploited until Bush pushed into the fringes of the policy post-9/11 where even American-educated, family-men were snatched from their lives (notably in America or Europe where allies were quick to assist) without a single call to their families. They just simply vanished and then showed up on an isolated road in the middle-east years later.
It’s not known how many of these government approved ‘snatches’ took place – some estimate over a 1,000 – but a few of these cases were bound to make press, mostly European citizens that found a more sympathetic media.
These cases resulted in Kelley Sane’s script, an Americanized version of events that would find a NYU-educated Egyptian Anwar (Omar Metwally) snapped up from his young son and his pregnant, blonde soccer-mom wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) on his return trip from a conference in South Africa.
His abduction is triggered by a suicide bombing in an undisclosed country where a CIA higher-up is murdered. The killed CIA agent's analyst, a young Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is forced into his shoes and soon finds himself having to work with and 'supervise' Abasi (Igal Naor), a master torturer enlisted by the American government to do the dirty work - that way when US officials get asked, they can answer on a technicality - 'The American Government doesn't torture".
Well-practiced torture techniques are used against Anwar on the evidence that Anwar received some phone calls from someone that bears the same name as a known terrorist. He passed a lie detector test and Douglas suspects he’s innocent but the head of CIA terrorism (Meryl Streep) insists on the continued torture. From the safety of her D.C. nest, she has talked herself into the fact that on a sliver of a chance that 1,000 lives can be saved at the expense and torture of one, so be it.
All the while, a late in the pregnancy Isabella heads to D.C. to meet up with an old college flame (Peter Sarsgaard) who is now an aid for a senator (Alan Arkin) to see if she can find some answers. The senator is able to get some answers but threatened political suicide from Streep’s terrorist head causes him to back off.
All of this plays out along with a subplot that involves Abasi’s daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) who gets involved in a Capulet/Montague romance with a young boy Khalid (Moa Khouas) whose family is leading a radical Islamic group Abasi is dedicated to breaking up. All of these threads eventually intertwine moving into the so-so climax.
Gavin Hood, making his first film since his sensational Oscar-winning ‘Totsi’ which took home the Best Foreign Film a couple years ago, makes an oddly restrained pic here. I’ll assume he didn’t want his first American pic to sink into unnecessary melodrama but the script gives little for Gyllenhaal and Witherspoon to do. Both are thinly-drawn characters at best and the script, the actors and Hood seem to do nothing to give these characters any life.
Gyllenhaal mostly veers between bored and indifferent and Witherspoon can only come up with so many worried expressions. Streep is negligible in a small role although Saarsgard and Arkin fare slightly better. Metwally and Naor carry most of the film’s thesping duties with Metwally getting the MVP for adding some much-needed emotion to a character that spends most of his time in a chair, nude and battered.
The film is presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen transfer and is enhanced for widescreen televisions. Special Features include an informative commentary track from Gavin Hood, a 30-minute making of, and the more intriguing 27 minute ‘Outlawed’ documentary that looks into a few true cases of Rendition. Hood introduces this featurette with the hope of putting a more real face on this horrible practice. A Theatrical Trailer rounds out the extras.
There’s no denying the topic of this film and judging the film on concept and well-meaning alone would grant the film top scores but looking at the film as a whole, I can’t see it as any more than and merely okay middlebrow take on said events. Gavin Hood, who expertly walked the line of melodrama in ‘Totsi’ can’t find that same gait here and seems content to stifle the tension whenever he can – a frustrating take on an otherwise volatile subject matter - Recommended but only just.
Rendition is now available at Amazon . It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a March 24th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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