mrkwooRendition (2007)
January 22nd 2009 12:23
There are 6 stories that we follow. One is of Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a US analyst who survives a suicide bombing in an Arab nation and is assigned to observe the interrogation of a suspected terrorist. Abasi Fawal is an brutal terrorist interrogator, the target of the attack. Fatima and Khalid are lovers, Fatima is Fawal's estranged daughter and Khalid is a political extremist. Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is an American-based Eqyptian Chemical Engineer, who is kidnapped by CIA operatives and is taken outside US soil to be tortured for information about the recent terrorist attack that killed one American. Isbabella Fields El-Ibrahimi is a wife and mother whose husband disappears without a trace, and seeks out old friend Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard) to help her find him. And Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) is the one in charge of ordering Renditions for suspected terrorists, and is determined to get the dirty work done to protect her country. There's a lot of people to follow. But we don't get to know any of these people in depth, so none are especially sympathetic or interesting.
The film promises a confronting look at the interrogation tactics of the US post 9/11, but all it really does is throw around a lot of hot air. The story hardly goes anywhere before it ends. All the flesh of the film is in the trailer, so the script is in reality quite thin. Its manner of storytelling is tries to be clever, reminicent of 21 Grams, but instead it just confuses without any proper resolution. The acting is competent, but nobody had much to work with. The occasional angry shouting matches didn't scream "Oscar". It's nicely filmed, especially the gloomily shot torture scenes which got pretty intense, but the script and the direction was so weak that it seemed quite a waste. There were so many questions left unanswered, and the ending is a bit of a cheat.
Rendition is not a bad film, but it deserved to be so much better than what it was, especially since it's based on actual events. Now is the time to say something, and they made it sound like they were actually going to, but Rendition ended up looking like a TV-movie, turning the interrogators into heartless thugs rather than political figures who are in the middle of a complex ethical debate. Boo. 6/10
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