Imagine you have just been on a plane for 18 hours. You have been on a business trip to South Africa. You are a high-paid professional. You've lived in the US for 20 years. You are in your thirties, you have a wife a little boy and another baby on the way. One thing, even though you have a green card, you are still Egyptian. On transit you are asked to come with 2 security guards, next thing you know you are overpowered, hooded and chained and after a brief ( but still reasonably civil) interrogation you are to be rendered! This is what happens to Anwar el Ibrahimi at the beginning of the movie. His is a story of pain and ( literally )torture. It's one of several story lines. One follows his wife's attempts to get more information. One follows the (cold) bureaucrats behind the rendition. Another story deals with the family of the man who leads the interrogation of Anwar el Ibrahimi. There are some other stories too and by the end they all neatly come together. Though the more famous actors like Reese Witherspoon ( as the distraught pregnant wife ) Jake Gyllenhaal ( as the CIA rookie forced to watch the interrogation in Northern Africa) and Meryl Streep ( as CIA hotshot Corine Whitman) it is really the more unknown actors that carry the story and give it it's heart. For me the actor playing the unfortunate Mr El Ibrahimi ( Omar Metwally ) was the heart and soul of this movie. His portrayal of a man in distress was shockingly well done. It's almost as if he was being tortured for real! Also Israeli actor Yigal Naor was very impressive as the part worried family-man and part extremely cruel chief of torture. Hard to watch and not exactly fun, but still very worthwhile.
225 Reviews
flawed but important drama
Buddy-513 November 2007
In this day and age in which just about every other news story involves discussions of waterboarding, images of Abu Ghraib, or tales of forced detentions at Guantanamo Bay, Gavin Hood's "Rendition" is about as up-to-the-minute and timely a movie as is ever likely to come out of the entertainment mills of mainstream Hollywood. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a perfect film, but neither does it merit the caterwauling opprobrium it has received at the hands of critics from all across the ideological and political spectrum.
The term "rendition" refers to the ability of the CIA to arrest any individuals it suspects of terrorist dealings, then to whisk them away in secret to a foreign country to interrogate and torture them for an indefinite period of time, all without due process of law. Anwar El-Ibrahimi is an Egyptian man who has been living for twenty years in the United States. He has an American wife, a young son and a new baby on the way. He seems a very unlikely candidate for a terrorist, yet one day, without warning or explanation, Anwar is seized and taken to an undisclosed location where he is subjected to brutal torture until he admits his involvement with a terrorist organization that Anwar claims to know nothing about.
On the negative side, "Rendition" falters occasionally in its storytelling abilities, often biting off a little more than it can chew in terms of both plot and character. The ostensible focal point is Douglas Freeman, a rookie CIA agent who is brought in to observe Anwar's "interrogation" at the hands of Egyptian officials. The problem is that, as conceived by writer Kelley Sane and enacted by Jake Gyllenhaal, Freeman seems too much of a naïve "boy scout" to make for a very plausible agent, and he isn't given the screen time he needs to develop fully as a character. We know little about him at the beginning and even less, it seems, at the end. He "goes through the motions," but we learn precious little about the man within. Thus, without a strong center of gravity to hold it all together, the film occasionally feels as if it is coming apart at the seams, with story elements flying off in all directions. A similar problem occurs with Anwar's distraught wife, played by Reese Witherspoon, a woman we never get to know much about apart from what we can see on the surface. Gyllenhaal and Witherspoon have both proved themselves to be fine actors under other circumstances, but here they are hemmed in by a restrictive screenplay that rarely lets them go beyond a single recurring note in their performances.
What makes "Rendition" an ultimately powerful film, however, is the extreme seriousness of the subject matter and the way in which two concurrently running plot lines elegantly dovetail into one another in the movie's closing stretches. It may make for a slightly more contrived story than perhaps we might have liked on this subject, but, hey, this is Hollywood after all, and the film has to pay SOME deference to mass audience expectations if it is to get itself green lighted, let alone see the light of day as a completed project.
Two of the supporting performances are particularly compelling in the film: Omar Metwally who makes palpable the terror of a man caught in a real life Kafkaesque nightmare from which he cannot awaken, and Yigal Naor who makes a surprisingly complex character out of the chief interrogator/torturer. Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin and Peter Sarsgaard also make their marks in smaller roles. Special mention should also be made of the warm and richly hued cinematography of Dion Beebe.
Does the movie oversimplify the issues? Probably. Does it stack the deck in favor of the torture victim and against the evil government forces? Most definitely. (One wonders how the movie would have played if Anwar really WERE a terrorist). Yet, the movie has the guts to tread on controversial ground. It isn't afraid to raise dicey questions or risk the disapproval of some for the political stances it takes. It openly ponders the issue of just how DOES a nation hold fast to its hard-won principle of "civil liberties for all" in the face of terrorism and fear. And just how much courage does it take for people of good will to finally stand up and say "enough is enough," even at the risk of being branded terrorist-appeasing and unpatriotic by those in power? (The movie also does not, in any way, deny the reality of extreme Islamic terrorism).
Thus, to reject "Rendition" out of hand would be to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. "Rendition" may not be perfect, but it IS good, and it has something of importance to say about the world in which we now live. And that alone makes it very much worth seeing.
The term "rendition" refers to the ability of the CIA to arrest any individuals it suspects of terrorist dealings, then to whisk them away in secret to a foreign country to interrogate and torture them for an indefinite period of time, all without due process of law. Anwar El-Ibrahimi is an Egyptian man who has been living for twenty years in the United States. He has an American wife, a young son and a new baby on the way. He seems a very unlikely candidate for a terrorist, yet one day, without warning or explanation, Anwar is seized and taken to an undisclosed location where he is subjected to brutal torture until he admits his involvement with a terrorist organization that Anwar claims to know nothing about.
On the negative side, "Rendition" falters occasionally in its storytelling abilities, often biting off a little more than it can chew in terms of both plot and character. The ostensible focal point is Douglas Freeman, a rookie CIA agent who is brought in to observe Anwar's "interrogation" at the hands of Egyptian officials. The problem is that, as conceived by writer Kelley Sane and enacted by Jake Gyllenhaal, Freeman seems too much of a naïve "boy scout" to make for a very plausible agent, and he isn't given the screen time he needs to develop fully as a character. We know little about him at the beginning and even less, it seems, at the end. He "goes through the motions," but we learn precious little about the man within. Thus, without a strong center of gravity to hold it all together, the film occasionally feels as if it is coming apart at the seams, with story elements flying off in all directions. A similar problem occurs with Anwar's distraught wife, played by Reese Witherspoon, a woman we never get to know much about apart from what we can see on the surface. Gyllenhaal and Witherspoon have both proved themselves to be fine actors under other circumstances, but here they are hemmed in by a restrictive screenplay that rarely lets them go beyond a single recurring note in their performances.
What makes "Rendition" an ultimately powerful film, however, is the extreme seriousness of the subject matter and the way in which two concurrently running plot lines elegantly dovetail into one another in the movie's closing stretches. It may make for a slightly more contrived story than perhaps we might have liked on this subject, but, hey, this is Hollywood after all, and the film has to pay SOME deference to mass audience expectations if it is to get itself green lighted, let alone see the light of day as a completed project.
Two of the supporting performances are particularly compelling in the film: Omar Metwally who makes palpable the terror of a man caught in a real life Kafkaesque nightmare from which he cannot awaken, and Yigal Naor who makes a surprisingly complex character out of the chief interrogator/torturer. Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin and Peter Sarsgaard also make their marks in smaller roles. Special mention should also be made of the warm and richly hued cinematography of Dion Beebe.
Does the movie oversimplify the issues? Probably. Does it stack the deck in favor of the torture victim and against the evil government forces? Most definitely. (One wonders how the movie would have played if Anwar really WERE a terrorist). Yet, the movie has the guts to tread on controversial ground. It isn't afraid to raise dicey questions or risk the disapproval of some for the political stances it takes. It openly ponders the issue of just how DOES a nation hold fast to its hard-won principle of "civil liberties for all" in the face of terrorism and fear. And just how much courage does it take for people of good will to finally stand up and say "enough is enough," even at the risk of being branded terrorist-appeasing and unpatriotic by those in power? (The movie also does not, in any way, deny the reality of extreme Islamic terrorism).
Thus, to reject "Rendition" out of hand would be to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. "Rendition" may not be perfect, but it IS good, and it has something of importance to say about the world in which we now live. And that alone makes it very much worth seeing.
Story that Moves
Jamester8 September 2007
Warning: Spoilers
I liked this movie. I saw it to a packed house at the Toronto International Film Festival the day after the gala opener which must have gone over well. The director, Gavin Hood was supposed to be present for today's screening, but alas his twins were born just hours before, so he had to jet on a flight back. '2 birthings in 24 hours' was how he joked about it.
Rendition refers to 'extraordinary rendition' -- a term whereby suspected terrorists in the US can be sent, without the legal consent of their parents nations, to prisons abroad to be questioned and detained.
It's fairly predictable -- innocent Egyptian-American man wrongly accused of being a terrorist 'goes missing' while en route from South Africa to Washingon DC. He is sent abroad, while wife at home (Reese Witherspoon) fights to find him and free him. But what makes this movie special are some nice choices in story-telling: 1) a human-touch story of what is going on in the locale where a suicide bomb-detonated; 2) the humanity of a CIA agent trying to understand and be honest with what is really going on; and 3) the chronology of story-telling which makes it a tight, taut tale that moves and jerks at the right moments. Ah -- relief! And a mix of emotions that swirl around as the story fights for an ending.
All-around strong acting with Meryl Streep as a standout vixen.
Rendition refers to 'extraordinary rendition' -- a term whereby suspected terrorists in the US can be sent, without the legal consent of their parents nations, to prisons abroad to be questioned and detained.
It's fairly predictable -- innocent Egyptian-American man wrongly accused of being a terrorist 'goes missing' while en route from South Africa to Washingon DC. He is sent abroad, while wife at home (Reese Witherspoon) fights to find him and free him. But what makes this movie special are some nice choices in story-telling: 1) a human-touch story of what is going on in the locale where a suicide bomb-detonated; 2) the humanity of a CIA agent trying to understand and be honest with what is really going on; and 3) the chronology of story-telling which makes it a tight, taut tale that moves and jerks at the right moments. Ah -- relief! And a mix of emotions that swirl around as the story fights for an ending.
All-around strong acting with Meryl Streep as a standout vixen.
Not complex enough to justify the theme
intelearts22 January 2008
Rendition fails to really nail the issue - it chooses instead to show its colours too distinctly.
And what we get instead is a decent political thriller, but one that is difficult to assess in terms of its attempted aim - after all, here we are dealing with what must be one of the emotive issues known to man - can torture ever be justified? Is the utilitarian rule of the possible gains worth the literal breaking of a possibly innocent man? Is he a terrorist, isn't he a terrorist?
This is a very important topic, and a very complex one, that is treated as though it were a film about lobbying on the one hand, showing Washington and the Beltway as a ground for piranhas to make or break their careers, and on the other, in Egypt, a battle for the sanity of all involved there.
Yes, it makes a good thriller; but, and it's a big but, it lacks the true depth of thought, rather than action, that will address the issue, rather than (God forbid) entertain an audience.
Excellent performances from all involved - really. Good steady hand at the helm - but what it lacks is complexity - it seems complex initially but unravels the further down the rabbit warren we go.
I came away uneasy, but not as uneasy as I should have, and non-plussed by the sleight of hand tricks that should have revealed real ambivalence, real moral dilemma, real grey areas, whereras instead I was left with black and white.
Not the film it wants to be, it is a good political thriller, but it is not as effective a piece of cinema as it could have been.
And what we get instead is a decent political thriller, but one that is difficult to assess in terms of its attempted aim - after all, here we are dealing with what must be one of the emotive issues known to man - can torture ever be justified? Is the utilitarian rule of the possible gains worth the literal breaking of a possibly innocent man? Is he a terrorist, isn't he a terrorist?
This is a very important topic, and a very complex one, that is treated as though it were a film about lobbying on the one hand, showing Washington and the Beltway as a ground for piranhas to make or break their careers, and on the other, in Egypt, a battle for the sanity of all involved there.
Yes, it makes a good thriller; but, and it's a big but, it lacks the true depth of thought, rather than action, that will address the issue, rather than (God forbid) entertain an audience.
Excellent performances from all involved - really. Good steady hand at the helm - but what it lacks is complexity - it seems complex initially but unravels the further down the rabbit warren we go.
I came away uneasy, but not as uneasy as I should have, and non-plussed by the sleight of hand tricks that should have revealed real ambivalence, real moral dilemma, real grey areas, whereras instead I was left with black and white.
Not the film it wants to be, it is a good political thriller, but it is not as effective a piece of cinema as it could have been.
Too many stereotypes, not enough passion to engage the audience
saareman10 September 2007
Reviewed at the World Premiere screening at Roy Thomson Hall, on Sept. 7, 2007 during the Toronto International Film Festival.
On the surface, this would seem to have everything going for it with a solid cast (veterans Witherspoon, Sarsgaard, Gyllenhaal, Streep, Arkin and new faces Metwally, Naor, Oukach, Khouas) a recent hot director (Gavin Hood, dir. of "Tsotsi", winner of the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Film) and a script on a current hot-button issue (the anti-terrorism law of extraordinary rendition which allows U.S. agents to transport suspected terrorists to off-shore sites where anti-torture laws do not apply).
Somehow each of the cast members, perhaps due to the number of major characters involved and thus the reduced screen time allowed for each, come across as superficial stereotypes - the distraught expectant mother, the ex-boyfriend who tries to help, the CIA agent with a conscience, the cold hearted CIA executive, the pragmatic senator, the torture victim, the secret police torturer, the torturer's daughter with a secret boyfriend, the boyfriend with a secret). You're not with any of the characters long enough to identify with them much and when it all gets tied up together in the end a bit too neatly you're just left feeling disappointed and cheated.
Early reviews seem to be mostly praising this but the friend whom I saw it with and another veteran TIFF goer that we see in various line-ups had the same sense of disappointment.
The film just seems too desperate to make it all relevant as it tries to inspire our shock at the wrongs being perpetrated in the name of the anti-terror wars but it mostly comes across as clichéd rather than natural. When the Gyllenhaal character finally builds up the will to act on his moral outrage you're just not convinced about how he's made this character arc as he has spent the first 3/4's of the film either stunned by the effects of a suicide bombing that takes place before his very eyes and then drinking himself into a stupor while occasionally taking time out for an illicit office romance or to bark an order to underlings. It seems Gyllenhaal is the protagonist we are meant to identify with but he is too weak-willed to inspire much audience sympathy. Witherspoon as the distraught expectant mother has more of an immediate draw on our heartstrings but doesn't kick off the expose on the U.S. side of the things which we are pulling for her to do by soliciting help from ex-boyfriend Sarsgaard (who works for Arkin's senator character) after her Egyptian-American husband goes mysteriously missing after a trans-Atlantic flight. There are at least a few moments of fireworks when Witherspoon at least briefly gets to confront the CIA exec played by Streep who is pulling the forced extradition strings behind the scenes, but a few seconds of confrontation doesn't make up for the 90 minutes of gradually increasing tedium that it takes to get there and we still have about 30 minutes to go in the plot after that highpoint. The subplot built around the head police torturer and his family in an un-named North African country is more engrossing and a neat twist is pulled off in that storyline but that wasn't enough to save the picture for us.
I had really been looking forward to this film but something just seemed to be missing in the way it pays off the different plot lines.
On the surface, this would seem to have everything going for it with a solid cast (veterans Witherspoon, Sarsgaard, Gyllenhaal, Streep, Arkin and new faces Metwally, Naor, Oukach, Khouas) a recent hot director (Gavin Hood, dir. of "Tsotsi", winner of the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Film) and a script on a current hot-button issue (the anti-terrorism law of extraordinary rendition which allows U.S. agents to transport suspected terrorists to off-shore sites where anti-torture laws do not apply).
Somehow each of the cast members, perhaps due to the number of major characters involved and thus the reduced screen time allowed for each, come across as superficial stereotypes - the distraught expectant mother, the ex-boyfriend who tries to help, the CIA agent with a conscience, the cold hearted CIA executive, the pragmatic senator, the torture victim, the secret police torturer, the torturer's daughter with a secret boyfriend, the boyfriend with a secret). You're not with any of the characters long enough to identify with them much and when it all gets tied up together in the end a bit too neatly you're just left feeling disappointed and cheated.
Early reviews seem to be mostly praising this but the friend whom I saw it with and another veteran TIFF goer that we see in various line-ups had the same sense of disappointment.
The film just seems too desperate to make it all relevant as it tries to inspire our shock at the wrongs being perpetrated in the name of the anti-terror wars but it mostly comes across as clichéd rather than natural. When the Gyllenhaal character finally builds up the will to act on his moral outrage you're just not convinced about how he's made this character arc as he has spent the first 3/4's of the film either stunned by the effects of a suicide bombing that takes place before his very eyes and then drinking himself into a stupor while occasionally taking time out for an illicit office romance or to bark an order to underlings. It seems Gyllenhaal is the protagonist we are meant to identify with but he is too weak-willed to inspire much audience sympathy. Witherspoon as the distraught expectant mother has more of an immediate draw on our heartstrings but doesn't kick off the expose on the U.S. side of the things which we are pulling for her to do by soliciting help from ex-boyfriend Sarsgaard (who works for Arkin's senator character) after her Egyptian-American husband goes mysteriously missing after a trans-Atlantic flight. There are at least a few moments of fireworks when Witherspoon at least briefly gets to confront the CIA exec played by Streep who is pulling the forced extradition strings behind the scenes, but a few seconds of confrontation doesn't make up for the 90 minutes of gradually increasing tedium that it takes to get there and we still have about 30 minutes to go in the plot after that highpoint. The subplot built around the head police torturer and his family in an un-named North African country is more engrossing and a neat twist is pulled off in that storyline but that wasn't enough to save the picture for us.
I had really been looking forward to this film but something just seemed to be missing in the way it pays off the different plot lines.
keeps you at edge-of-your-seat ...
Vic_max9 January 2009
This was a pretty intense movie. It starts out with a bang - literally - a suicide bombing in a public area. Not a bad opener.
Shortly thereafter, a US chemical engineer, on his way back from a conference in South Africa, is abducted by the CIA in Washington DC airport ... and his name is wiped from his plane's flight list. His family is left searching for him at the airport terminal. We follow his predicament as we watch decision makers assess his situation ... and watch his nightmare unfold.
It was hard not to stop watching; you want to see what's going to happen next ... what are those that are keeping one "eye closed" do? ... what is the family going to do? ... what is a sympathetic senator's aide do? what did he 'really' do or not do??
FWIW, the story is supposedly inspired on a similar event involving Khalid El-Masri in 2003. There's also another storyline going on in this movie that eventually ties in near the end of movie. This second story/plot is good, but not as good as the main one. It drags the movie down a notch to a "7" - but that's still really good. If you like intense dramas, this is a good one to check out.
Shortly thereafter, a US chemical engineer, on his way back from a conference in South Africa, is abducted by the CIA in Washington DC airport ... and his name is wiped from his plane's flight list. His family is left searching for him at the airport terminal. We follow his predicament as we watch decision makers assess his situation ... and watch his nightmare unfold.
It was hard not to stop watching; you want to see what's going to happen next ... what are those that are keeping one "eye closed" do? ... what is the family going to do? ... what is a sympathetic senator's aide do? what did he 'really' do or not do??
FWIW, the story is supposedly inspired on a similar event involving Khalid El-Masri in 2003. There's also another storyline going on in this movie that eventually ties in near the end of movie. This second story/plot is good, but not as good as the main one. It drags the movie down a notch to a "7" - but that's still really good. If you like intense dramas, this is a good one to check out.
This compelling post 9/11 political thriller kinda work. It was thought-provoking, timely and somewhat intelligent, but there are some parts, that could need some work.
ironhorse_iv30 August 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Ever since, the terrorist attacks on 9/11. There has been several increase security measures taken to protect the United States and its citizens. Among them, is the Patriot Act; which allows the US Government some unprecedented powers to gather intelligence and pursue any form of terrorist. Sometimes, the Intel is un-liable. Somethings, the person, you find, isn't the person that commit the crime. Rendition tells the horrific story of what happens when an innocent man like Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is unjustly accused of a terrorist attack. Then forced into 'enhanced interrogation' by his accusers. Can a man like this, be able to prove his guilt or will guilty by circumstance spell the end of him? Watch the movie directed by Gavin Hood to find out! Without spoiling the movie too much. I found the over-simplified drama trying too hard to prove that torture doesn't work. Don't get me wrong, I hate torture, it's cold-hearted and immoral, but could the threat of torture, be a justified method in saving lives? Somewhat. There has been accounts that some interrogations have produce some reliably useful and accurate information. See the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for more information. To deny that torture doesn't work, at all, is a bit hypocritical. Experience tells us that when faced with serious threats to one's life, one person might take whatever measures it deems necessary to abate the worst. I get the fact that some terrorists are very unlike to talk, due to their strongly held beliefs. Even if they do, you can't be sure, that you're getting the right information. I get that, but if you had the choice of trying to save 10,000 innocent people over morality. One might say, that the morality might have to take a day off. All, I'm saying is the movie should be aware of this and shouldn't preachy their viewpoints on people. It should allow the viewers to judge more. Don't get me wrong, the movie does try to do it, at one time, but I guess, they dropped ball. The film's director, Gavin Hood, stated that the lack of explanation on the phone call, made from the bomber to Anwar was deliberate cut, so as to create ambiguity about whether Anwar was guilty or innocent, and to let the viewer decide whether this ambiguity warranted torture. The only bad thing, about this, is the fact, the movie painted him, already innocent, from the beginning, so it really hard to believe in that ambiguity. It made for very sloppy writing. Another problem with the film, how broad and cheesy, the fiction was. I hate the fact, the movie is set in some unidentified North African city, rather than some realistic place. You never truly, get why there is a threat of jihadist, or how extraordinary rendition is even possible, there, because how the film treats those information as if it wasn't important. Another problem is how cheesy the metaphorically American names are; mainly the main heroic character, who happens to named Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) and the supposedly made villain, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) that sounds like White-Man. Honestly, I wish, they made more use of the source material. The movie is supposedly based on the true story case of Khalid El-Masri, an innocent man mistaken for a terrorist, but both stories rarely have anything similar. The movie has more similarities to the case of Maher Arar, another man mistaken for a terrorist than Khalid El-Masri. In my opinion, the movie should be label, as inspired by true events, rather than based on true events. This abduction thriller does have some good things about it. I love, the secondary story about an impressionable boy, Khalid (Moa Khouas) who more or less inadvertently is manipulated into becoming a terrorist cell. I love, how great, the majority of the acting was. Even, the supporting character were very good, at their parts. Mad props go to Igal Naor. His acting really does shine in this film. I also love, how beautiful, the background music was. Composer Paul Hepker & Mark Kilian really did a good job in the film score. While, the movie does have some disturbing scenes. It wasn't that hard to get through. There were some slow pacing parts, and some scenes can be a bit boring, but the majority of the film was pretty engaging. Overall: While, I agree with Mr. William Shakespeare & Gavin Hood's statement, about torture. This well-executed tale that falls short of completely working only because it refuses to acknowledge the potential ambiguity of its subject matter. I do recommended watching, but the movie could had been so much better. At least, it's better than its carbon-copy film, 2007's Extraordinary Rendition by Jim Threapleton. That movie wasn't that good.
Not for the Blockbuster Seekers
GlitteringCupcake28 February 2008
Despite the fact that Rendition reaps all the qualities of what should have been an Oscar Nominated Film, it simply doesn't draw the viewer in, lacking character depth. With an Ensemble cast, with the highest of credentials, one would naturally expect this film to be a hit. But unless you have the subtitles turned on, to understand what would be construed as garbled Arabic, there is no way to follow the multiple story lines, jumbling together at once. The viewer is thrown from scene to scene, not comprehending what is really truly going on until the very end of the movie, and not getting enough out of the many characters in the story line. All in all, it was a well acted film; the characters did a good job depicting what they were hired to do, and most importantly the film slams a subject down that isn't necessarily something the government wants you to be informed about. It could have been way better, and the simple minded lot of Americans, who didn't understand it at all would have been better satisfied. This film is not to be viewed by the viewer expecting a blockbuster hit. It is geared for the viewer who wants to make their brain work, and understand the corruption of the United States of America.
Rendition
JuliaGulia96726414 November 2007
"I fear you speak upon the rack, where men enforced do speak anything." This Shakespearean line from The Merchant of Venice is echoed again in the new film Rendition which introduces the viewer to the "enhanced methods of interrogation", renditions, which began in the Clinton Administration and have become more commonplace since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
The film features an all-star cast, with Oscar winners Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, and Reese Witherspoon, as well as Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Omar Metwally. Supporting roles filled by unfamiliar actors deliver as well, sucking the audience into the plot, and showing how many people can be affected by overseas terror attacks, and our means of investigating them.
Rendition follows an Egyptian born terrorism suspect (Metwally) who is taken by U.S. officials following his flight from South Africa to Washington DC to an undisclosed prison overseas. His pregnant wife (Witherspoon) ventures to Washington DC to find out about his disappearance through a family friend and Senator's employee (Sarsgaard). Gyllenhaal plays a young CIA analyst at the overseas detention facility who monitors the violent interrogation.
This film follows the emotional plights of the torture victim (Metwally), and those involved in obtaining the supposed information from him. Some, like the CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal), are visibly shaken and horrified by the methods exercised, while others, the stern Senator (Streep) and foreign interrogator (Yigal Naor), see it as necessary and effective.
The film may be described by some as a political piece, but is ultimately an emotional one. Metwally's performance as the tortured prisoner is Oscar-worthy. The film does not intend to preach, but rather to question and inform the audience on a topic that does not often have a human face put on it. Renditions have been known to work, but have also been known to produce false information from innocent prisoners. The film simply depicts the emotional struggles of those involved in such grave business, and does so in a way that will affect every viewer differently. The film will keep your interest, and have you engaged in each of the character's plights.
The film features an all-star cast, with Oscar winners Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, and Reese Witherspoon, as well as Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Omar Metwally. Supporting roles filled by unfamiliar actors deliver as well, sucking the audience into the plot, and showing how many people can be affected by overseas terror attacks, and our means of investigating them.
Rendition follows an Egyptian born terrorism suspect (Metwally) who is taken by U.S. officials following his flight from South Africa to Washington DC to an undisclosed prison overseas. His pregnant wife (Witherspoon) ventures to Washington DC to find out about his disappearance through a family friend and Senator's employee (Sarsgaard). Gyllenhaal plays a young CIA analyst at the overseas detention facility who monitors the violent interrogation.
This film follows the emotional plights of the torture victim (Metwally), and those involved in obtaining the supposed information from him. Some, like the CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal), are visibly shaken and horrified by the methods exercised, while others, the stern Senator (Streep) and foreign interrogator (Yigal Naor), see it as necessary and effective.
The film may be described by some as a political piece, but is ultimately an emotional one. Metwally's performance as the tortured prisoner is Oscar-worthy. The film does not intend to preach, but rather to question and inform the audience on a topic that does not often have a human face put on it. Renditions have been known to work, but have also been known to produce false information from innocent prisoners. The film simply depicts the emotional struggles of those involved in such grave business, and does so in a way that will affect every viewer differently. The film will keep your interest, and have you engaged in each of the character's plights.
Where did "Rendition" go?
jean-bolduc17 November 2007
No more than a week after "Rendition" came out, hubby and I went to the theater and discovered that -- poof -- it was gone. "We don't have that one," said the numbskull at the box office.
It was in their newspaper ad and listed on the phone message, but the movie was GONE.
And when we went to look for it at other area theaters (Central North Carolina) it had vanished from the market. Is it being tortured in another state? What kind of promotional trick is this?
Is the movie that bad? Is the movie that GOOD? Where did Rendition go? Can you kidnap a movie?
It was in their newspaper ad and listed on the phone message, but the movie was GONE.
And when we went to look for it at other area theaters (Central North Carolina) it had vanished from the market. Is it being tortured in another state? What kind of promotional trick is this?
Is the movie that bad? Is the movie that GOOD? Where did Rendition go? Can you kidnap a movie?
Renders the heart shattered, but may not be the ultimate statement on rendition itself
inkblot1122 October 2007
Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) is married to a handsome chemical engineer named Anwar (Omar Metwally). Anwar is an Egyptian by birth but has lived in the United States since he was fourteen. The two of them, having met and married in college, have a young son named Jeremy and Isabella is expected their second child very soon. While in South Africa on business, Anwar telephones Isabella to give her the details of when his return flight is landing in Chicago. But, although Isabella and Jeremy go to the airport, Anwar never arrives. Tragically, Anwar's cell phone was mistakenly linked to a terrorist group and a top CIA official, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) orders Anwar to be captured, hooded, and whisked away to a secret prison in North Africa. There, Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), a top police official, is put in charge of Anwar's interrogation and torture but is required to have a U.S. official present. That horrible task falls to Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a self-proclaimed pencil pusher, who is thrust into his "first torture" upon the bombing death of the usual CIA toughman. Douglas' orders come straight from Corrine who charges him to be ruthless. Yet, Douglas is greatly disturbed by both the severity of the torture and Anwar's protestations of innocence. Meanwhile, Isabella tries to enlist the help of an old college flame, Alan (Peter Sarsgaard), who works for Illinois senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), to help discover the truth about her husband's disappearance. Will Izzy ever see her husband again? Then, too, Mr. Fawal, who rules his family with an iron fist, has a daughter, Fatima, who has run away from home, leaving no clues to her whereabouts. Will he be able to find her? This film, taken from today's headlines, is disturbing, to say the very least. The tragic practice of rendition was greatly increased after 9/11, when U.S. officials became obsessed with seizing suspected terrorists and taking them away from American soil for torture, where the U.S. laws do not apply. Of course, mistakes are made and innocent people are put through hell, with no hope of seeing daylight again. Then, too, the practice of torture is suspect, for studies show that victims will say just about anything to relieve their pain and thus "make up stories" of little value. In this light, it is a challenge to present a story that adequately conveys the true horrors of rendition yet, this film makes a valiant attempt to do so. As the main "stars", stellar actors Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal are good but, surprisingly, not great. Each of them give a performance that is more forced than genuine. To be fair, Witherspoon's role is rather small, leaving one to assume that some of her scenes were edited out. While she does have some touching moments, there are times when she appears dazed and defeated. Gyllenhaal, a very fine actor, is also too restrained, for his character should be explosive with anger over the torture of an innocent man, yet, he keeps himself in check. However, the rest of the cast is superlative. Streep, whose own progressive political views are widely known, chews up the screen with her role as the chilling, Dick-Cheney-in-high-heels CIA official. Sarsgaard and Arkin, too, are great as the sympathetic men who, nevertheless, know which way the winds of politics blow. But, most importantly, it is the Arabic cast members who strike the most compelling notes. Metwally is heartbreaking as the tortured innocent while Naor freezes the blood as the main interrogation officer. All of the other Arabic actors are also very fine. Costumes, scenery, and production values are topnotch. However, viewer be warned. This is a very difficult film, to watch and to stomach. While never excessive, the torture scenes are very real and very upsetting. Although the film has a mission and an admirable one, at that, one has to realize that it is not for everyone, especially those who are faint of heart. That said, the movie should be seen by all those who care about learning more about rendition. While not the definitive word on the practice, it has more than enough force to show the world how immoral and wicked this horrendous method of interrogation really is.
is it ever, ever right to torture an individual
lucad_9921 October 2007
I saw the movie yesterday and was shocked by it, but even more shocked by some of the comments I have read here. One person wrote that it was ambiguous if the victim of the torture was guilty or not--therefore... One person wrote that since he wasn't an American citizen, therefore... Some people comment that the people in the Middle East hate us and want us dead, therefore... So are we saying then that it is right to torture someone who is guilty of a crime? Are we saying it is right to torture someone who is not an American Citizen? Are we saying that it is right to torture someone who may hate us and want us dead? Are we saying that, as is written in the Geneva Convention, the Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution of the United States that "torture is wrong, but some torture is less wrong than others?" When does it become "right" to torture? THAT is why this movie is powerful-- it is ambiguous, but not about torture. Torture is always wrong, and if we are willing to do it, even in the name of justice and "National Security" or "freedom and democracy" then we are wrong and we are evil; we are doing exactly what we are accusing our enemies of doing (and we are calling them "wrong" in the same breath.) My favorite line in the film was "if you don't want to compromise join Amnesty International." Right on.
An ax to grind that only gets blunted
Chris Knipp16 January 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Todd McCarthy of 'Variety' writes of this film: "One hopes that there is more verisimilitude to the North African scenes (shot in Morocco) than there is for the Chicago section; the block on which the Witherspoon character lives was quite clearly lensed in California, as it looks absolutely nothing like any street in Illinois." Well, how would McCarthy expect the "North African" scenes to have more verisimilitude than the Stateside ones? The Arab characters speak a mixed generic Arabic no actual people speak, and live in settings that are never specific either. If the Chicago of the movie is fake, at least a town is specified, but not for the town in "North Africa." Basically, 'Rendition' is another American film about Arabs and terrorism and US intelligence that bandies about false generalizations in scenes that aren't real. It isn't effective or entertaining even as fantasy. Reviews of this 2007 release have justifiably blamed the director, Gavin Hood, for turning 'Rendition's' melodramatic, potentially wrenching and explosive story into something that winds up being muddled and flat--which is basically true. Apparently Hood was trying to be subtle, but he had the wrong material for that.
One may also fault the writer Kelley Sane. How much does Sane really know about international politics, anti-terrorism, terrorism itself, particularly the Islamist kind--or about the US government and the Arab World? How much does any American mainstream filmmaker know about these things? One exception: Gaghan's 'Syriana.' It's impossible to follow, but at least conveys some sense of the complexities and ironies of these tangled issues and worlds. Here things are simplified to make a point--that "extraordinary rendition" is bad, cruel, unethical, and in violation of international law, Besides also being terrible for PR, it's a poor intelligence-gathering device, especially when the victim turns out to be innocent. There may have been hundreds of renditions, dozens of which, at least, involved men we now know to have been wrongly accused as, most famously, was the case with Khaled al-Masri and Maher Arar. The practice and the term "extraordinary rendition" began with the Clinton administration, as is explained in the film, but was obviously stepped up after 9/11. Plainly the plot is heavily weighted toward critiquing this dubious tactic. But even assuming such an agenda is proper to a fiction feature, the result is muddled; it gets lost in sequences that are paradoxically both simplistic and overcomplicated.
As in Ridley Scott's disappointing 'Body of Lies' and Jeffrey Nachmanoff's inaccurate 'Traitor,' 'Rendition' uses explosions as the starting point of its action. Somebody sets off a bomb that kills a CIA operative in that generic, unreal "North Africa." A younger, more innocent and less experienced CIA man called Freeman (Jake Gyllenhall), transparently conceived as the moral "heart'" of the piece, has survived the blast. He is immediately moved in to replace the dead operative and act as an increasingly skeptical (but disappointingly limp) "observer" of "extraordinary rendition" interrogation-cum-torture designed to trace the imagined mastermind of the blast. The CIA thinks it knows who was behind the bomb.
They also think an Egyptian-born scientist called Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a US resident married to a pregnant Reese Witherspoon, has received calls on his cell phone from this man. Terrorist monikers are confusing, and Americans aren't very good at Arabic names anyway: El-Ibrahimi may not be at all involved. Nonethess he is subjected to a terrible ordeal. A Stateside CIA lady (Meryl Streep, in ice queen mode) orders El-Ibrahimi, who's just returning from a conference in Johannesburg, to be "rendered" to where the bombing took place (not really the way "rendition" usually has occurred).
To liven things up the local cop in charge of the brutal extra-legal interrogation is having family problems. He is Abasi Fawwal, played by Yigal Naor, an Israeli actor of Iraqi Jewish origins (when you want cruel, hire an Israeli). Fawwal's pretty daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) is in love with Khalid (Moa Khouas), a young man whose Islamist group he's trying to disrupt. And there are other emotional complications: the man the frantic Witherspoon seeks out to pull strings with a senator (Alan Arkin) is an old boyfriend of hers (Peter Sarsgaard). Eventually Sarsgaard puts Witherspoon directly in contact with Arkin and Streep, with whom she pleads in vain for information about the whereabouts and safety of her disappeared husband. Meanwhile El-Ibrahimi gets tortured and Freeman watches and agonizes. To quote 'Variety' again, "Locations skip around a lot and Hood's direction provides scant fluidity to knit them together." Yes, both the screenwriter and the director have bitten off more than they could chew.
Today's movies involving Arabs and terrorism in the post-9/11 world like 'Syriana,' 'Traitor,' 'Body of Lies,' and 'Rendition' make a pretense of sophistication. They have sequences shot in Arab countries, with Arabic dialogue. But the assumptions and the settings are mistaken, and the dialogue is inauthentic. At bottom the treatment is not much more sophisticated or accurate than the stereotypes described in Jack Shaheens'shocking survey, 'Real Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.'
'Rendition' is different from its Oriental-ist movie cousins in being a well-intentioned "message" film specifically aiming to expose an obviously brutal and extra-legal US practice. But this is a task better performed by a documentary. 'Taxi to the Dark Side' is such a film--a documentary dealing not specifically with "extraordinary rendition" but with closely related issues, in a powerful and strictly accurate way.
'Rendition's' plot hinges on the idea that Freeman, concluding that El-Ibrahimi is the wrong man and has no useful information, oversteps his authority and gets him out of the prison and back to Chicago. This plot twist overlooks the fact that "extraordinary rendition" isn't just wrong when an innocent man can provide no information, but even when a guilty one spills the beans. Little is done to clarify the issues by a film as blunt and clumsy as 'Rendition.'
One may also fault the writer Kelley Sane. How much does Sane really know about international politics, anti-terrorism, terrorism itself, particularly the Islamist kind--or about the US government and the Arab World? How much does any American mainstream filmmaker know about these things? One exception: Gaghan's 'Syriana.' It's impossible to follow, but at least conveys some sense of the complexities and ironies of these tangled issues and worlds. Here things are simplified to make a point--that "extraordinary rendition" is bad, cruel, unethical, and in violation of international law, Besides also being terrible for PR, it's a poor intelligence-gathering device, especially when the victim turns out to be innocent. There may have been hundreds of renditions, dozens of which, at least, involved men we now know to have been wrongly accused as, most famously, was the case with Khaled al-Masri and Maher Arar. The practice and the term "extraordinary rendition" began with the Clinton administration, as is explained in the film, but was obviously stepped up after 9/11. Plainly the plot is heavily weighted toward critiquing this dubious tactic. But even assuming such an agenda is proper to a fiction feature, the result is muddled; it gets lost in sequences that are paradoxically both simplistic and overcomplicated.
As in Ridley Scott's disappointing 'Body of Lies' and Jeffrey Nachmanoff's inaccurate 'Traitor,' 'Rendition' uses explosions as the starting point of its action. Somebody sets off a bomb that kills a CIA operative in that generic, unreal "North Africa." A younger, more innocent and less experienced CIA man called Freeman (Jake Gyllenhall), transparently conceived as the moral "heart'" of the piece, has survived the blast. He is immediately moved in to replace the dead operative and act as an increasingly skeptical (but disappointingly limp) "observer" of "extraordinary rendition" interrogation-cum-torture designed to trace the imagined mastermind of the blast. The CIA thinks it knows who was behind the bomb.
They also think an Egyptian-born scientist called Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a US resident married to a pregnant Reese Witherspoon, has received calls on his cell phone from this man. Terrorist monikers are confusing, and Americans aren't very good at Arabic names anyway: El-Ibrahimi may not be at all involved. Nonethess he is subjected to a terrible ordeal. A Stateside CIA lady (Meryl Streep, in ice queen mode) orders El-Ibrahimi, who's just returning from a conference in Johannesburg, to be "rendered" to where the bombing took place (not really the way "rendition" usually has occurred).
To liven things up the local cop in charge of the brutal extra-legal interrogation is having family problems. He is Abasi Fawwal, played by Yigal Naor, an Israeli actor of Iraqi Jewish origins (when you want cruel, hire an Israeli). Fawwal's pretty daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) is in love with Khalid (Moa Khouas), a young man whose Islamist group he's trying to disrupt. And there are other emotional complications: the man the frantic Witherspoon seeks out to pull strings with a senator (Alan Arkin) is an old boyfriend of hers (Peter Sarsgaard). Eventually Sarsgaard puts Witherspoon directly in contact with Arkin and Streep, with whom she pleads in vain for information about the whereabouts and safety of her disappeared husband. Meanwhile El-Ibrahimi gets tortured and Freeman watches and agonizes. To quote 'Variety' again, "Locations skip around a lot and Hood's direction provides scant fluidity to knit them together." Yes, both the screenwriter and the director have bitten off more than they could chew.
Today's movies involving Arabs and terrorism in the post-9/11 world like 'Syriana,' 'Traitor,' 'Body of Lies,' and 'Rendition' make a pretense of sophistication. They have sequences shot in Arab countries, with Arabic dialogue. But the assumptions and the settings are mistaken, and the dialogue is inauthentic. At bottom the treatment is not much more sophisticated or accurate than the stereotypes described in Jack Shaheens'shocking survey, 'Real Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.'
'Rendition' is different from its Oriental-ist movie cousins in being a well-intentioned "message" film specifically aiming to expose an obviously brutal and extra-legal US practice. But this is a task better performed by a documentary. 'Taxi to the Dark Side' is such a film--a documentary dealing not specifically with "extraordinary rendition" but with closely related issues, in a powerful and strictly accurate way.
'Rendition's' plot hinges on the idea that Freeman, concluding that El-Ibrahimi is the wrong man and has no useful information, oversteps his authority and gets him out of the prison and back to Chicago. This plot twist overlooks the fact that "extraordinary rendition" isn't just wrong when an innocent man can provide no information, but even when a guilty one spills the beans. Little is done to clarify the issues by a film as blunt and clumsy as 'Rendition.'
a sign of the times
LunarPoise2 April 2011
The term 'rendition' is a euphemism for state-sponsored kidnapping, just as 'waterboarding' is a euphemism for torture and the vile 'collateral damage' means civilian casualties. Kidnap, torture and the murder of innocents is what the bad guys do. You cannot carry out these acts and claim to be the good guys. Anyone who says it is 'naive' to think so is feeble-minded.
Thematically, this film doesn't work because it thinks there is an argument to be had on this topic. The filmmakers think it has to be argued through, but I can't see any educated person having their mind changed by a Hollywood dramatization. The issue is covered in such a shallow manner that this film could easily be called Rendition for Dummies.
Considered in purely dramatic terms, the acting is high quality, as you would expect from a stellar cast, though the stand out is the little-known Zineb Oukach as love-struck Fatima in an ill-fated relationship with one of her father's political opponents. There is a looping time-line a la Pulp Fiction that seems out of place given the charged themes. There is also a sense that the 'bad guys' get their comeuppance, which, given the fact that we are living through these issues and they are far from resolved, is premature at best and insulting at worst.
I was left with a sense that some issues are best served by being considered with the benefit of distance and hindsight.
Thematically, this film doesn't work because it thinks there is an argument to be had on this topic. The filmmakers think it has to be argued through, but I can't see any educated person having their mind changed by a Hollywood dramatization. The issue is covered in such a shallow manner that this film could easily be called Rendition for Dummies.
Considered in purely dramatic terms, the acting is high quality, as you would expect from a stellar cast, though the stand out is the little-known Zineb Oukach as love-struck Fatima in an ill-fated relationship with one of her father's political opponents. There is a looping time-line a la Pulp Fiction that seems out of place given the charged themes. There is also a sense that the 'bad guys' get their comeuppance, which, given the fact that we are living through these issues and they are far from resolved, is premature at best and insulting at worst.
I was left with a sense that some issues are best served by being considered with the benefit of distance and hindsight.
Is It Ever Right To Torture?
Chrysanthepop27 December 2008
At least given the circumstances such as those in the movie, when you do not know whether the suspect is innocent or guilty but you want to believe that he is guilty...would it then be right to torture this person until he cracks and yields to your belief even if it is under the name of justice, freedom and democracy? Anwar El_Ibrahimi is an American (of Egyptian descent) who has a well-paying respectable job, an American wife and a clean record but even that is not enough to free him from the suspect list because of a phone number that was found on his cell phone. Upon landing in America, he is immediately flown to Egypt (they do not even try him in the states) because America does not allow torture. He is humiliated. He is dehumanized. He is brutally tortured and stripped of dignity, courage and self worth... and yet they find no solid evidence that links him to the bombing.
About a month ago I was clearing up some old newspapers and happened to see an ad of the movie. It had an interesting cast and title. I had never heard of it before and decided to give it a chance. It seemed to be one of the run-of-the-mill thrillers but 'Rendition' is far from that. This is one powerful movie that tackles a very serious theme and raises questions but at the same time it is an engaging intricate thriller. Gavin Hood does a marvelous job. He gives an unbiased portrayal of the Americans and Egyptians even though I wish he would have explored the terrorists' mindset a little more for they are portrayed under a slightly stereotypical light.
'Rendition' is quite well shot. The Egyptian locations look raw and exotic. The background score is eclectic. I also liked the use of a warmer tint in the Egyptian scenes and a colder tint for the American scenes. The jump cuts and shots from different angles work well. The story telling is solid and nonlinear.
I don't think the cast could get any better than this. The performances are overall excellent: Starting with a heartbreaking Omar Metwally, an ambivalent Jake Gyllenhal, a distraught Reese Witherspoon, a hateful Meryl Streep, a chilling Yigal Naor, a naive Zineb Oukach, an opportunist Alan Arkin and a concerned Peter Sarsgaard.
I am shocked at how so many people did not get the movie as the story is straightforward and many keep wondering whether Anwar was actually innocent while others are quick to say that he was indeed guilty. Many were even supporting the torture because he wasn't of American origin and because this kind of thing happens in Egypt anyway etc etc. This movie is not for such immature people and it does not take a rocket scientist to show that Anwar WAS innocent. 'Rendition' is a disturbing film to watch but it is one that must be seen as it provokes a lot of strong themes that many would not dare to question.
About a month ago I was clearing up some old newspapers and happened to see an ad of the movie. It had an interesting cast and title. I had never heard of it before and decided to give it a chance. It seemed to be one of the run-of-the-mill thrillers but 'Rendition' is far from that. This is one powerful movie that tackles a very serious theme and raises questions but at the same time it is an engaging intricate thriller. Gavin Hood does a marvelous job. He gives an unbiased portrayal of the Americans and Egyptians even though I wish he would have explored the terrorists' mindset a little more for they are portrayed under a slightly stereotypical light.
'Rendition' is quite well shot. The Egyptian locations look raw and exotic. The background score is eclectic. I also liked the use of a warmer tint in the Egyptian scenes and a colder tint for the American scenes. The jump cuts and shots from different angles work well. The story telling is solid and nonlinear.
I don't think the cast could get any better than this. The performances are overall excellent: Starting with a heartbreaking Omar Metwally, an ambivalent Jake Gyllenhal, a distraught Reese Witherspoon, a hateful Meryl Streep, a chilling Yigal Naor, a naive Zineb Oukach, an opportunist Alan Arkin and a concerned Peter Sarsgaard.
I am shocked at how so many people did not get the movie as the story is straightforward and many keep wondering whether Anwar was actually innocent while others are quick to say that he was indeed guilty. Many were even supporting the torture because he wasn't of American origin and because this kind of thing happens in Egypt anyway etc etc. This movie is not for such immature people and it does not take a rocket scientist to show that Anwar WAS innocent. 'Rendition' is a disturbing film to watch but it is one that must be seen as it provokes a lot of strong themes that many would not dare to question.
The American hero, again
me-lasierra14 August 2008
Entertaining thriller, i must reckon. The falsely accused man, Hitchcock's most horrid nightmare and his favorite leitmotiv, is one of the axis of the movie, together with some victims of brainwashing fundamentalism-terrorism, and the classic American hero, fighting against a corrupt system, for the sake of truth and justice, like Lucky Lucke, riding alone against towards the sunset. Nice plot, with a(n also) classic McGuffin, the secret ingredients to make bombs. All in all enjoyable, as i said, but a little bit sweaty already. It is much nicer when somebody breaks the formula, even if slightly. Still, the film is modern in its setting and also in some points, such as the interracial relationship. Meryl Strip, amazing, as usual.
Rendition had some good points, but "fairy tale" ending.
HalGuentert14 October 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Rendition was well directed, and I was glad to see the subject of torture along with the violations of the US Constitution, international law, the "Golden Rule", and plain common sense be covered by in this movie.
I did not think the ending was well executed, due to trying to weave an excessive number of story lines into a surprise ending. The number of story lines seems to dilute the points made by each other, and left me a little confused and disappointed at how unrealistic the ending was after all the effort to provide realism throughout the rest of the movie.
Somewhat like a one hour "Perry Mason" episode, everything has to fall into place when time runs out. The killer usually "spills his or her guts" once Perry makes his accusations, and any loose ends are tied up at a meeting in Perry's office or a restaurant with someone asking the appropriate questions and Perry explaining the answers.
I still had those questions at the end:
1) How does the "whistleblower" know he will get help from the Washington Post, and not find himself treated like a "terrorist"? It is an obsolete assumption that going to the newspapers for help will work, since the CIA and Operation Mockingbird have been exposed, and most of the media is bought and paid for by the CIA. In any case, the crusaders for truth in the media are few and far between, while the CIA propaganda experts and operators are now illegally planted throughout the US.
Even at the end of "Three Days of the Condor" (1970s?), Redford is asked if he thinks going to the NY Times will do him any good. Does anyone believe that things are better now?
2) What happens to the CIA analyst? Does he think he can just walk away from the CIA, or continue life as if nothing happened?
3) What happens with the Egytian and his family? Does he think they can continue working in America as an alien, as if nothing happened?
4) How many people will be able to get any help from a US Senator for their case? There were too many exceptional coincidences that allowed Reese Witherspoon's character to reach, pressure, and gain information from the right people.
I see this movie as having the "fairy tale" ending that going to the newspapers will expose all the problems, and everyone will live happily ever after. This loses focus on the point that "Rendition" with torture is illegal, unconstitutional, not supported by most Americans, not proved effective in providing intelligence, and not something an American would want to face from other countries. We should be handling "terrorism" as any other crime instead of creating a new category of crime that establishes petty tyrants who completely undermine the value of the Constitution and "due process" as an effective guide. The real crime is that our "representatives" refuse to listen to us, and continue to insulate themselves from the Constitution and the will of the citizens, while the media supports this "government knows best" attitude.
I did not think the ending was well executed, due to trying to weave an excessive number of story lines into a surprise ending. The number of story lines seems to dilute the points made by each other, and left me a little confused and disappointed at how unrealistic the ending was after all the effort to provide realism throughout the rest of the movie.
Somewhat like a one hour "Perry Mason" episode, everything has to fall into place when time runs out. The killer usually "spills his or her guts" once Perry makes his accusations, and any loose ends are tied up at a meeting in Perry's office or a restaurant with someone asking the appropriate questions and Perry explaining the answers.
I still had those questions at the end:
1) How does the "whistleblower" know he will get help from the Washington Post, and not find himself treated like a "terrorist"? It is an obsolete assumption that going to the newspapers for help will work, since the CIA and Operation Mockingbird have been exposed, and most of the media is bought and paid for by the CIA. In any case, the crusaders for truth in the media are few and far between, while the CIA propaganda experts and operators are now illegally planted throughout the US.
Even at the end of "Three Days of the Condor" (1970s?), Redford is asked if he thinks going to the NY Times will do him any good. Does anyone believe that things are better now?
2) What happens to the CIA analyst? Does he think he can just walk away from the CIA, or continue life as if nothing happened?
3) What happens with the Egytian and his family? Does he think they can continue working in America as an alien, as if nothing happened?
4) How many people will be able to get any help from a US Senator for their case? There were too many exceptional coincidences that allowed Reese Witherspoon's character to reach, pressure, and gain information from the right people.
I see this movie as having the "fairy tale" ending that going to the newspapers will expose all the problems, and everyone will live happily ever after. This loses focus on the point that "Rendition" with torture is illegal, unconstitutional, not supported by most Americans, not proved effective in providing intelligence, and not something an American would want to face from other countries. We should be handling "terrorism" as any other crime instead of creating a new category of crime that establishes petty tyrants who completely undermine the value of the Constitution and "due process" as an effective guide. The real crime is that our "representatives" refuse to listen to us, and continue to insulate themselves from the Constitution and the will of the citizens, while the media supports this "government knows best" attitude.
The U.S. Doesn't Torture, We Interrogate
view_and_review12 December 2021
The idea of torture to get information has been explored in various ways in many movies. Before 9/11 it was usually a means of the good guys, or the bad guys, to get information. It always worked for the good guys, but for some reason, the bad guys could never get what they wanted. After 9/11 torture wasn't always effective for the good guys, nor was it always directed towards the right person. Movies such as "Unthinkable," "Strip Search," and "Rendition" all approach the torture topic from different angles.
"Rendition" is about an American citizen from Egypt named Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) who popped up as a main suspect with knowledge of a bombing in North Africa. The rendition program is a covert CIA program that gives them the authority to take U. S. citizens to a foreign country for "interrogation." The program is headed by Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) and she calls all the shots.
Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) acts as the U. S. eyes in North Africa during the interrogation. He has his doubts about the tactics and the authenticity of the information Anwar gives up.
Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) is Anwar's pregnant wife and she can't find out where her husband is, though she knows he boarded the flight for home. She solicits the help of a political friend (Peter Sarsgaard) to find out answers.
"Rendition" explores the doubts surrounding torturing suspects and, quite frankly, the distance the U. S. wants to put between itself and the torturing we endorse. It's a suspenseful movie that has a few moving parts that aren't readily apparent as to their connection. It all comes together nicely in the end even if it wasn't the best production throughout.
"Rendition" is about an American citizen from Egypt named Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) who popped up as a main suspect with knowledge of a bombing in North Africa. The rendition program is a covert CIA program that gives them the authority to take U. S. citizens to a foreign country for "interrogation." The program is headed by Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) and she calls all the shots.
Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) acts as the U. S. eyes in North Africa during the interrogation. He has his doubts about the tactics and the authenticity of the information Anwar gives up.
Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) is Anwar's pregnant wife and she can't find out where her husband is, though she knows he boarded the flight for home. She solicits the help of a political friend (Peter Sarsgaard) to find out answers.
"Rendition" explores the doubts surrounding torturing suspects and, quite frankly, the distance the U. S. wants to put between itself and the torturing we endorse. It's a suspenseful movie that has a few moving parts that aren't readily apparent as to their connection. It all comes together nicely in the end even if it wasn't the best production throughout.
Ambitious and engaging but sometimes rather dull thriller
wellthatswhatithinkanyway28 May 2008
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
A bombing occurs in a Muslim country after a failed assassination attempt, and after some intelligence gathering, Egyptian born US based businessman Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is apprehended by the US authorities and taken in for interrogation overseas. Assigned to observe his questioning is Special Agent Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) who becomes disillusioned by the torturous methods he is forced to witness. Meanwhile, Anwar's American wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) desperately tries to find out what happened behind the scenes but is given short shrift by stuffy, self righteous defence secretary Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) who's trying to defend her own interests. Meanwhile a tale of forbidden love in the land of the attack leads to an explosive finale where all will be revealed.
An unflinching critique of American foreign policy, that doesn't cop out like glorified action film The Kingdom, Rendition certainly deserves praise for having the courage to tackle such a sensitive and emotionally charged subject and for being an intelligent and contemplative thriller that presents some very dubious methods of interrogation and intelligence gathering by the various authorities. Unfortunately, the sheer pace of the film is what gets it down, at times dragging so slowly as to be at a snail's pace. It's certainly not for those who like their thrillers fast paced and snappy. It takes it's time and presents a wordy script with admittently well written characters who play like you imagine those in charge probably do and makes you feel for them, even the less sympathetic ones, in the unenviable situations they are in. If it's a reflection of the real situation, then it's definitely food for thought and will provoke various arguments for how those in charge of Homeland Security go about defending America's citizens and dealing with those who pose a threat to them.
In a day and age of speedy, snazzy thrillers that come and go like buses, Rendition certainly doesn't bow to the crowd. Unfortunately, at times, this is more of a burden than a praise. ***
A bombing occurs in a Muslim country after a failed assassination attempt, and after some intelligence gathering, Egyptian born US based businessman Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is apprehended by the US authorities and taken in for interrogation overseas. Assigned to observe his questioning is Special Agent Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) who becomes disillusioned by the torturous methods he is forced to witness. Meanwhile, Anwar's American wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) desperately tries to find out what happened behind the scenes but is given short shrift by stuffy, self righteous defence secretary Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) who's trying to defend her own interests. Meanwhile a tale of forbidden love in the land of the attack leads to an explosive finale where all will be revealed.
An unflinching critique of American foreign policy, that doesn't cop out like glorified action film The Kingdom, Rendition certainly deserves praise for having the courage to tackle such a sensitive and emotionally charged subject and for being an intelligent and contemplative thriller that presents some very dubious methods of interrogation and intelligence gathering by the various authorities. Unfortunately, the sheer pace of the film is what gets it down, at times dragging so slowly as to be at a snail's pace. It's certainly not for those who like their thrillers fast paced and snappy. It takes it's time and presents a wordy script with admittently well written characters who play like you imagine those in charge probably do and makes you feel for them, even the less sympathetic ones, in the unenviable situations they are in. If it's a reflection of the real situation, then it's definitely food for thought and will provoke various arguments for how those in charge of Homeland Security go about defending America's citizens and dealing with those who pose a threat to them.
In a day and age of speedy, snazzy thrillers that come and go like buses, Rendition certainly doesn't bow to the crowd. Unfortunately, at times, this is more of a burden than a praise. ***
Rendition A Pretty Good Thriller With Impressive Performances
tburke858 June 2009
Rendition is a pretty good thriller with impressive performances by the cast including Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Peter Sarsgard, Alan Arkin, and Meryl Streep. Gyllenhall and Witherspoon are in it the most of the five actors which is all right because they have more to do. They both bring a lot to their roles and make the best of it. Sarsgard, Arkin, and Streep are effective supporting characters but they lacked development and screen time. Director Gavin Hood the man behind films like Totsi and most recently X-Men Orgins Wolverine (which was okay but could've been better) does an admirable job of bringing this movie to life. The action sequence early on was horrific and realistic giving audiences a glimpse of what life is like in some foreign countries across the world. The supporting cast of unknown actors are good in their roles and very believable. The pacing of the movie was a little slow at times but the rest of the movie especially the acting made up for it's few flaws. Rendition is better to see if you don't know too much about the film. The story is well told in an intricate way so that near the end everything comes together. Overall the movie was better than expected maybe not the greatest but if your a fan of anybody in the cast than you might enjoy this one as well.
Masterful and Topical
corrosion-217 October 2007
Rendition presents a very topical matter in the form of a very tense thriller. It's a gripping, and not a preaching, movie. Seeing it in an Arab country with a mixture of Arabian and European audience gave it an extra level of atmosphere. The audience was totally gripped by the film and gave it a loud applause afterwards. The story of an Egyptian, married to an American, picked up on the suspicion of links to terrorist organizations and shipped to a friendly (with US) Arab country for "enhanced interrogation (as Meryl Streep's character states in the film: "we have no torture in the US") seems to be from the front page of todays news. There is a very neat link between the various characters which appear in the movie and the pace of the film never drops. The movies'message seems to be (as stated by Jake Gyllenhal's character in the film) that by abducting and torturing suspects you create many more terrorists. The acting is uniformly excellent with Streep and Reese Witherspoon the stand outs. Not to be missed.
good actors
SnoopyStyle7 December 2013
CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) barely survives a suicide terrorist attack in North Africa. Meanwhile, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is an Egyptian taken by the authorities in Washington airport and transported to the middle east. His pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) isn't notified and she seeks help from an old acquaintance Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard) who is an assistant to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin). Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) is the boss who refuses to back down.
The evidence against Anwar is several phone calls from a known terrorists. It seems that the question about the phone calls could be more easily answered with telephone records. It just seems like they didn't follow the clues correctly. It's very frustrating to be told of these phone calls, and yet there seems to be so little information about them in the movie. And the information in the movie seems so scant and unreliable. In the end, I can't tell what if anything he's done or not done.
There are some big time actors in some juicy roles. The juiciest has to be Reese Witherspoon's role. She has the big time confrontation with Meryl Streep. But the Arab story is just as good with an interesting twist in the end.
I just wish the phone calls evidence was more clear one way or another. Whether the audience accepts his guilt or innocence is of the utmost importance. And it needed to be settled more concretely.
The evidence against Anwar is several phone calls from a known terrorists. It seems that the question about the phone calls could be more easily answered with telephone records. It just seems like they didn't follow the clues correctly. It's very frustrating to be told of these phone calls, and yet there seems to be so little information about them in the movie. And the information in the movie seems so scant and unreliable. In the end, I can't tell what if anything he's done or not done.
There are some big time actors in some juicy roles. The juiciest has to be Reese Witherspoon's role. She has the big time confrontation with Meryl Streep. But the Arab story is just as good with an interesting twist in the end.
I just wish the phone calls evidence was more clear one way or another. Whether the audience accepts his guilt or innocence is of the utmost importance. And it needed to be settled more concretely.
This could ACTUALLY have happened to me!!!
mohamedster18 September 2008
I'm Egyptian. I have a green card. I have been living in the US since 1991. I have a very common Arabic name. I'm married (non-American but non-Egyptian, non-Arab wife). I have children who are born in the US. I have a PhD in Cell Biology from the US and I travel for conferences. I make 6 figure income and I own a home in the Washington, DC area. I pay my taxes and outside 1 or 2 parking tickets I have no blemish on my record since I came to this country in 1991. I look more Egyptian than the Ibrahimi character but my spoken English is as good as his.
A couple of months ago I was returning from a conference/company business in Spain through Munich Germany to Washington, DC (Home). I was picked up in Munich airport by a German officer as soon as I got off the Madrid plane. He was waiting for me. He was about to start interrogating me until I simply told him "I have no business in Germany, I'm just passing through". He had let me go with the utmost disappointment. That was nothing compared to what happened at Washington, Dulles airport (Which was not nearly as bad as what happened to Ibrahimi in the movie). The customs officer asked me a couple of questions about the length and purpose of my trip. He then wrote a letter C on my custom declaration form and let me go. After I picked up my checked bag I was stopped at the last exit point (Some Homeland Security crap). I sat there for 3 hours along with many different people of many different nationalities. I was not told the reason for my detainment. I was not allowed to use my phone or ANY other phone. I was feisty at first asking to be told of the reason or let me go but decided to suck it up and just wait and see. I asked if I can call my wife to tell her that I'm going to be late but was told no. When I tried to use my phone and as soon as my wife said "hello", an officer yanked the phone out of hand and threatened me to confiscate it. When I asked about needing to call home because my family is waiting, they said "Three hours is nothing, we will make contact after 5 hours". When I asked to use the bathroom, an officer accompanied me there. It toilet was funny; I guess it was a prison style toilet that is all metal with no toilet seat. Finally, they called my name and gave me my passport/green card and said you can go. I asked what the problem was, they said "nothing"!! I know it was only 3 hours but I was dead tired and wanted to go home to see my wife and kids.
As for the movie, it was very well made. Unlike most movies that involve Arabs and use non-Arab actors who just speak gibberish, this movie the Arabic was 100% correct. I assume the country is Morocco (North Africa).
A couple of months ago I was returning from a conference/company business in Spain through Munich Germany to Washington, DC (Home). I was picked up in Munich airport by a German officer as soon as I got off the Madrid plane. He was waiting for me. He was about to start interrogating me until I simply told him "I have no business in Germany, I'm just passing through". He had let me go with the utmost disappointment. That was nothing compared to what happened at Washington, Dulles airport (Which was not nearly as bad as what happened to Ibrahimi in the movie). The customs officer asked me a couple of questions about the length and purpose of my trip. He then wrote a letter C on my custom declaration form and let me go. After I picked up my checked bag I was stopped at the last exit point (Some Homeland Security crap). I sat there for 3 hours along with many different people of many different nationalities. I was not told the reason for my detainment. I was not allowed to use my phone or ANY other phone. I was feisty at first asking to be told of the reason or let me go but decided to suck it up and just wait and see. I asked if I can call my wife to tell her that I'm going to be late but was told no. When I tried to use my phone and as soon as my wife said "hello", an officer yanked the phone out of hand and threatened me to confiscate it. When I asked about needing to call home because my family is waiting, they said "Three hours is nothing, we will make contact after 5 hours". When I asked to use the bathroom, an officer accompanied me there. It toilet was funny; I guess it was a prison style toilet that is all metal with no toilet seat. Finally, they called my name and gave me my passport/green card and said you can go. I asked what the problem was, they said "nothing"!! I know it was only 3 hours but I was dead tired and wanted to go home to see my wife and kids.
As for the movie, it was very well made. Unlike most movies that involve Arabs and use non-Arab actors who just speak gibberish, this movie the Arabic was 100% correct. I assume the country is Morocco (North Africa).
what happens post-9/11 when you have the wrong last name
blanche-222 February 2015
Rendition is one scary movie. It's scary because I believe what happened to the central character can happen to anyone.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays CIA analyst Douglas Freeman. While in North Africa, a suicide bomber strikes, killing 19 people instead of the person the bomb was intended to kill, an interrogator named Abasi.
Though Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is a successful chemical engineer living in Chicago with his wife and son, he is detained when he tries to leave for the U.S. after a conference. It turns out that there are telephone records that show a terrorist, Rashid, called his cell phone. Anwar doesn't know anything about it.
Anwar is taken to a detention center. His pregnant wife (Reese Witherspoon) doesn't know what happened to him. She calls on a friend of hers in government, but ultimately, he is stonewalled and his boss orders him to let it go.
Freeman is asked to observe the interrogation of Anwar by Abasi. Anwar is tortured, but still doesn't know anything. Ultimately he talks -- he gives the names of men on a soccer team as his accomplices in bomb-making and says he was paid $40,000 by Rashid. Freeman realizes that it's a fake confession. But what can he do to help him? There is a parallel story, of Abasi's daughter Fatima who has left home with her boyfriend Khalid. She doesn't know that he is a terrorist and that Abasi is responsible for the death of his brother.
The question is asked - is it ever right to torture? Will it only serve to elicit false confessions? And Freeman asks what useful intelligence has ever come out of these interrogations. Meanwhile, back home, even though the United States doesn't torture people, it instead lets other people torture American citizens.
Meryl Streep has a supporting role, and she does a good job as a cold bitch. I thought Reese Witherspoon was terrific in a very emotional role, and the rest of the acting was solid. Some of the scenes were too graphic for me to watch.
I think one of the reviews on here says it all. It's from an Egyptian man now living in the U.S. who was detained. What happened in this film could easily have happened to him. And it could happen to anyone with the wrong last name.
I know Homeland Security was set up to protect us, and it's a good thing to have the various governmental organizations communicating with one another. And it seems to me that they've stopped quite a few attacks. However, the flip side is that now the police or anyone in authority can accuse you of terrorism just because they don't like you. I had a brush with it myself, so I know of what I speak.
It's not a great film, but it made its point.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays CIA analyst Douglas Freeman. While in North Africa, a suicide bomber strikes, killing 19 people instead of the person the bomb was intended to kill, an interrogator named Abasi.
Though Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is a successful chemical engineer living in Chicago with his wife and son, he is detained when he tries to leave for the U.S. after a conference. It turns out that there are telephone records that show a terrorist, Rashid, called his cell phone. Anwar doesn't know anything about it.
Anwar is taken to a detention center. His pregnant wife (Reese Witherspoon) doesn't know what happened to him. She calls on a friend of hers in government, but ultimately, he is stonewalled and his boss orders him to let it go.
Freeman is asked to observe the interrogation of Anwar by Abasi. Anwar is tortured, but still doesn't know anything. Ultimately he talks -- he gives the names of men on a soccer team as his accomplices in bomb-making and says he was paid $40,000 by Rashid. Freeman realizes that it's a fake confession. But what can he do to help him? There is a parallel story, of Abasi's daughter Fatima who has left home with her boyfriend Khalid. She doesn't know that he is a terrorist and that Abasi is responsible for the death of his brother.
The question is asked - is it ever right to torture? Will it only serve to elicit false confessions? And Freeman asks what useful intelligence has ever come out of these interrogations. Meanwhile, back home, even though the United States doesn't torture people, it instead lets other people torture American citizens.
Meryl Streep has a supporting role, and she does a good job as a cold bitch. I thought Reese Witherspoon was terrific in a very emotional role, and the rest of the acting was solid. Some of the scenes were too graphic for me to watch.
I think one of the reviews on here says it all. It's from an Egyptian man now living in the U.S. who was detained. What happened in this film could easily have happened to him. And it could happen to anyone with the wrong last name.
I know Homeland Security was set up to protect us, and it's a good thing to have the various governmental organizations communicating with one another. And it seems to me that they've stopped quite a few attacks. However, the flip side is that now the police or anyone in authority can accuse you of terrorism just because they don't like you. I had a brush with it myself, so I know of what I speak.
It's not a great film, but it made its point.
Simplified version of a large gray area
Jay_Exiomo25 October 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Isabella (Witherspoon) is supposed to meet his husband, Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), who is supposed to return from a conference in South Africa to the US. When he doesn't show up at the airport, she is told that her husband has never boarded the plane. She tries to track him down, and learns that his husband is a terrorist suspect linked to a suicide bombing that occurred recently in an unnamed North African country.
Meanwhile, CIA analyst Doug Freeman (Gyllenhaal) becomes a witness, albeit reluctantly, to the torture of Ibrahimi, who firmly maintains his innocence despite the glaring evidence stating otherwise. Freeman believes him, but his superiors don't.
At first glance, "Rendition" seems like THE political thriller of the season, what with a cast that boasts of Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin, among others; and a director in Gavin Hood, the same guy who helmed the Academy Award-winning "Tsotsi." And to some extent, the film is kept alive by the engaging performances of the actors involved plus Hood's ability to rack up the tension. But ultimately, the film contents itself on remaining uncomfortably simplifying things up - where black is black, and white is white - wasting a potentially more intelligent treatment of the theme.
If only for the performance and the visual mastery of the film, "Rendition" earns points. But it doesn't get over the fact that what it rams down the throat of the viewers isn't exactly what it is. For the film, there's either the good and the evil. Yet the truth, as always, lies somewhere in between.
Meanwhile, CIA analyst Doug Freeman (Gyllenhaal) becomes a witness, albeit reluctantly, to the torture of Ibrahimi, who firmly maintains his innocence despite the glaring evidence stating otherwise. Freeman believes him, but his superiors don't.
At first glance, "Rendition" seems like THE political thriller of the season, what with a cast that boasts of Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin, among others; and a director in Gavin Hood, the same guy who helmed the Academy Award-winning "Tsotsi." And to some extent, the film is kept alive by the engaging performances of the actors involved plus Hood's ability to rack up the tension. But ultimately, the film contents itself on remaining uncomfortably simplifying things up - where black is black, and white is white - wasting a potentially more intelligent treatment of the theme.
If only for the performance and the visual mastery of the film, "Rendition" earns points. But it doesn't get over the fact that what it rams down the throat of the viewers isn't exactly what it is. For the film, there's either the good and the evil. Yet the truth, as always, lies somewhere in between.
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